Former Empire actor Jussie Smollett has been found guilty of staging a hate crime against himself.
A jury agreed to convict Smollett, 39, on five of the six charges he faced for lying about the attack, with prosecutors claiming he staged the incident in a bid to help his career.
In January 2019, the TV star filed police reports alleging that he was set upon by two assailants. The alleged attack took place in Chicago where Smollett claims the pair tied a noose around his neck.
On Thursday, Smollett was convicted on five counts related to giving a false report to police on the day of the alleged attack, and now faces up to three years in prison. However, he was found not guilty on the sixth count of giving a false report to police at a later date, after the incident.
He faces up to three years in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.
Smollett was seen leaving court flanked by members of his family, but he did not stop to speak. Instead, his lawyer Nenye Uche spoke to reporters at the podium outside the courthouse and said he ‘respectfully disagreed’ with the guilty verdict, insisting that his client is ‘100% innocent’.
Uche said he was confident Smollett would win on appeal and that ‘he’s going to be cleared of all, all accusations on all charges’.
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‘The verdict is inconsistent. You can’t say Jussie is lying and say Jussie is not lying for the same exact incident,’ he added.
The attorney continued: ‘We are confident in our appellate system. We are confident in our Illinois Supreme Court, and we’re confident that at the end of the day, what’s out there in the news media and in the gossip forums are not going to stand a chance in court.’
In a rare move for a defence, Smollett took to the stand during the two-week trial where he rejected earlier testimony from Nigerian-born brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo who said that he had planned the attack himself and paid them $3,500 (£2,600) to carry it out.
The actor told the court he ‘never’ paid the pair for the alleged scheme, claiming the cheque was for a meal and workout plan for while he was going to be travelling.
He maintained to the court: ‘There was no hoax,’ claiming he was attacked while returning home after buying a Subway sandwich.
Smollett claimed that he was attacked by a ‘massive’ man wearing a ski mask, who he assumed was white as they used a racial slur and shouted about him being in ‘Maga country,’ in reference to then-President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan.
He alleged that the pair then put something around his neck, which he later realised when he arrived home was a noose.
The brothers, however, claim that Smollett had planned the attack and instructed them to shout about ‘Maga country’ while they roughed him up.
Smollett rose to fame in the hit TV series Empire, playing lead character Jamal Lyon, alongside Terrence Howard and Taraji P Henson. His character was axed from the series in 2019 following the staged hate crime.
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