Jussie Smollett sentenced to 150 days in jail for staging hate crime

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in jail on Thursday for staging a hate crime attack on himself in 2019.
• Smollett was convicted for lying to police and posing as the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.
• The disgraced actor shouted in the courtroom that he was “innocent” and “not suicidal.”

Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett was sentenced to 30 months of probation on Thursday for staging a hate crime against himself. The sentence included 150 days of jail time.

Smollett was convicted for lying to police and posing as the victim of a racist and homophobic attack. The actor raised his fist in the air and shouted that he was “innocent” and that he was “not suicidal.”

“I am not suicidal! I am innocent. And I am not suicidal,” he said in court. “If I did this, then it means that I stuck my fist in the fears of black Americans who have been in this country for over 400 years, and the fears of the LGBT community.”

In December 2021, the actor was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct. He was charged with filing false police reports stating he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.

Cook County Judge James Linn also sentenced Smollett to pay $120,106 restitution to the city of Chicago to cover the cost of the police investigation, as well as a $25,000 fine.

On January 29, 2019, Smollett told police that two unidentified men attacked him shouting, “This is MAGA country!” Smollett, who is Black and openly gay, also said the men beat him, poured bleach on him, and wrapped a rope around his neck like a noose.

Prosecutors accused Smollett of paying two brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, to pretend to attack him that night. The Osundairo brothers testified that Smollett had paid them $3,500 for the job and provided specific instructions on how to fake the attack.

In a blistering speech on Thursday, Judge Linn marveled at Smollett’s “hypocrisy,” called him a “charlatan,” and that said despite Smollett’s social-justice advocacy and philanthropy, he had done “damage to real victims of hate crimes.”

Linn openly speculated about Smollett’s motives behind the hoax, saying Smollett knew that racial tension was “a sore spot for everyone in this country.”

“I don’t think money motivated you at all. The only thing that I can find is that you really craved the attention,” Linn said. “You took some scabs off some healing wounds for one reason: you wanted to make yourself more famous. And for a while, it worked. You were actually throwing a national pity party for yourself.”

Linn also told Smollett he had a side that was “profoundly arrogant and selfish and narcissistic.”

Smollett pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and even testified in his own defense during his trial. He told the jury “there was no hoax,” insisted he was genuinely attacked, and said he did pay the Osundairo brothers $3,500 — but only for a nutrition and workout plan. 

Last month, Smollett’s defense attorney filed a motion to ask Judge Linn to either toss the conviction or grant Smollett a new trial. On Thursday, Linn denied that motion.

“I do believe at the end of the day that Mr. Smollett had a fair trial,” Linn said. “There was nothing unconstitutional about these proceedings.”

Source: New York Post