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    Jussie Smollett Found Guilty: What Comes Next?

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    The actor who was found guilty of falsely telling the police he was the victim of a hate crime faces a possible sentence of up to three years, but experts disagree on whether the judge is likely to incarcerate him.The discussion in the case of Jussie Smollett, the actor convicted on Thursday of falsely reporting he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, has turned to whether the actor will receive prison time when he is sentenced in several weeks.Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor who handled the case, said on Friday that he had not yet decided on what recommendation he would make to the judge but again emphasized how serious he thought the case was. Mr. Webb has pointed in several settings to the social damage caused by faking a hate crime, about the waste of police resources spent on the case and about the consequences of lying to a jury, which found Mr. Smollett guilty after he spent seven hours on the witness stand standing by his account.“It’s fair to say Mr. Smollett is not repentant at all,” Mr. Webb said. “And he doubled down during our trial. I will emphasize those matters as I should.”But some experts said they would find it surprising if Mr. Smollett were to be imprisoned because he was convicted of the lowest level felony offense and has no prior felony convictions.Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, a former prosecutor who said his client planned to appeal the verdict, echoed that sentiment on Thursday.“I’ve never seen a case like this where the person got jail time,” he said. “And he shouldn’t because he’s innocent.”Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, speaking to reporters after the verdict on Thursday, surrounded by other members of his defense team.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressMr. Smollett was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct, which carry a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Even Mr. Webb has acknowledged that those charges don’t typically lead judges to incarcerate people.But he said: “There’s never been a case like this. I don’t know any case in Illinois that involves this criminal misconduct and deceiving police for weeks on end about a hate crime and then compounding it by lying to a jury.”Judge James B. Linn, who is presiding on the case, has the option of sentencing the defendant to just probation or a shorter period of prison time. He agreed on Thursday to release Mr. Smollett while he awaits sentencing.“What I could see happening is probation with a ton of community service hours,” said Michael O’Meara, a criminal defense lawyer who has also worked as a prosecutor, “and just to sting him a bit, maybe some jail time.”The judge will certainly consider Mr. Smollett’s prior criminal infraction, though it was 14 years ago and relatively minor. He was convicted in California of misdemeanor driving under the influence, making false statements to the police and driving without a license. (Mr. Smollett pleaded no contest.)In this instance, it was Mr. Smollett who reported a crime, an attack by two assailants who he said beat him up, yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, placed a rope around his neck and poured bleach on his clothing in an early morning assault on a frigid day in 2019. But two brothers told the police that Mr. Smollett had directed them to carry out the attack, and he was ultimately charged by a grand jury with lying to the police, a hoax that prosecutors argued had been orchestrated for publicity.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Jussie Smollett Found Guilty of Reporting a Fake Hate Crime

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      Mr. Smollett was convicted of filing a false police report in 2019 claiming he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack. The jury deliberated for more than nine hours.A jury in Chicago found the actor Jussie Smollett guilty on Thursday of falsely reporting to the police that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic assault in 2019, an attack that investigators concluded was a hoax directed by the actor himself.With its finding, after more than nine hours of deliberation, the 12-person jury indicated it had chosen to believe the accounts of two brothers who testified that Mr. Smollett had asked them to mildly injure him as part of a publicity stunt.Mr. Smollett, wearing a dark gray suit and a blue shirt, sat upright in his chair, hands clasped, staring directly at the jury just after the verdict was read.Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor who handled the case, said afterward that Mr. Smollett only made matters worse by continuing to stand by his account at trial.“This jury worked so hard,” Mr. Webb said, “and for Mr. Smollett to come up before them and lie for hours and hours and hours — that really compounded his misconduct.”Jussie Smollett, an actor in the Fox music-industry drama “Empire,” was found guilty of filing a false police report after staging a hate crime against himself.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressThe case dated back to the frigid early hours of Jan. 29, 2019, when Mr. Smollett — known then for his role in the Fox music-industry drama “Empire” — told the police he had been the victim of a hate crime near his apartment building in Chicago. Mr. Smollett said one of his attackers had even yelled, “This is MAGA country.”His account captured the attention of a politically polarized nation concerned with rising hate crime reports and the persistent threat of racism. But public support for Mr. Smollett quickly evaporated when investigators came to the conclusion three weeks later that he had staged the attack on himself.Chicago officials, upset at the amount of police work that was spent on the case, have sued Mr. Smollett to recoup some of the city’s costs. They were similarly critical in 2019 when the office of the city’s top prosecutor, Kim Foxx, who early on had recused herself from the case, citing a potential conflict, quietly dropped the charges in exchange for Mr. Smollett’s agreement to forfeit his $10,000 bond and perform community service.The case was later revived by Mr. Webb, who reviewed that decision and ultimately announced that a grand jury had charged Mr. Smollett with six counts of felony disorderly conduct. Mr. Smollett was convicted on five counts on Thursday, relating to conversations he had with the police just after the attack. He was acquitted on the sixth count, which related to a follow-up conversation with an investigator two weeks later.The actor faces up to three years in prison. The judge did not set a sentencing date and released him on bond.His defense team said Mr. Smollett would appeal.“We remain confident that we’re going to come back and he’s going to be vindicated,” said Nenye Uche, one of the actor’s lawyers.Prosecutors argued in court that Mr. Smollett had instructed two brothers, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, on all of the details of the attack, specifying that they should punch him only hard enough to create a bruise, pour bleach on his clothing and place a rope around his neck like a noose. The prosecutors faulted Mr. Smollett for not cooperating adequately with the investigation by balking at turning over evidence like his cellphone.“Mr. Smollett didn’t want the crime solved,” Mr. Webb said during his closing argument on Wednesday. “He wanted to report it as a hate crime; he wanted media exposure; but he didn’t want the brothers apprehended.”Mr. Webb told the jury that Mr. Smollett staged the attack because he had received a death threat in the mail and was upset by the muted response of the producers behind “Empire,” the television show on which he starred.The defense came forward with a sharply different account of Mr. Smollett’s attitudes and behaviors. The actor had not been upset by the TV studio’s response to the letter, his lawyers said, and had, in fact, turned down its offer to have security drive Mr. Smollett to and from the set. They said the Osundairo brothers were liars who had attacked Mr. Smollett to scare him into hiring them as bodyguards, and who concocted a story to avoid prosecution themselves.Mr. Smollett’s lawyer Mr. Uche argued that prosecutors had not established that the actor had a clear motive for any scheme, and that, in fact, his client had every reason not to have faked an attack.“His lack of motive is pretty obvious: Media attention, he doesn’t like it,” Mr. Uche said. What is more, he said, Mr. Smollett had a music video shoot coming up and could not afford his face getting bruised.Mr. Smollett, 39, took the stand and testified for more than seven hours in an effort to counter the narrative of the brothers, who had detailed how Mr. Smollett planned the attack. He said his interactions with the brothers in the days and hours leading up to the attack had been harmless. A “dry run” in his car that the brothers had described to the jury as a planning exercise two days before the attack was really an aimless drive through Chicago smoking marijuana.But the jury chose to believe the brothers. Abimbola Osundairo, 28, a fitness aficionado who had appeared on “Empire” in minor roles, testified that the planning began when Mr. Smollett, whom he was helping train for the music video, texted him for help with something “on the low.”“He said he wanted me to beat him up,” Mr. Osundairo said of their meeting. “I looked puzzled, and then he explained he wanted me to fake beat him up.”Mr. Osundairo said he agreed to the plan because he felt “indebted” to Mr. Smollett for getting him a role as a stand-in on “Empire.” Olabinjo Osundairo, 30, who had also appeared on “Empire” in minor roles, said he participated to “curry favor” with Mr. Smollett.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Jussie Smollett Timeline: A Case With Twists and Turns

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      The case began in 2019 when the actor reported that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, and led to a trial in which he was accused of staging the attack himself.Nearly three years have passed since the actor Jussie Smollett reported that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago. The police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime, then accused Mr. Smollett of staging the attack himself. Charges were filed against Mr. Smollett, then dropped. A special prosecutor was appointed and charges were filed again, leading to his trial on charges of disorderly conduct for making a false report to the police.Here’s a timeline of how we got here.Jan. 29, 2019: Mr. Smollett, who is Black and gay, tells the police that at about 2 a.m., two masked men, one of whom he believed to be white, attacked him on the 300 block of East Lower North Water Street in downtown Chicago. The assailants, according to Mr. Smollett, hurled homophobic and racial slurs at him, put a rope around his neck and poured a chemical substance on him.Mr. Smollett says he went home and a close associate of his reported the incident to the police 40 minutes after it happened. Anthony Guglielmi, the chief spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, later told The Chicago Sun-Times that Mr. Smollett had been hesitant to call the police because of his status as a public figure.Law enforcement officials say they are treating the incident “as a possible hate crime.” At a follow-up visit by investigators, Mr. Smollett says the attackers mentioned “MAGA country,” a reference to the campaign slogan of former President Donald J. Trump.Celebrities, politicians and advocacy groups offer their support to Mr. Smollett. Fox, the network on which “Empire” airs, issues a statement saying the “entire studio, network and production stands united in the face of any despicable act of violence and hate.”Detectives comb through surveillance camera recordings but say they can’t find images of the attack.Jan. 30: Investigators announce the first possible break in the case: A surveillance image shows “potential persons of interest wanted for questioning” in connection to the case. The images are of two men with their backs to the camera.At this point, the F.B.I. is already investigating a threatening letter sent to Mr. Smollett at the “Empire” production offices in Chicago the week before.Jan. 31: Mr. Trump is asked about the incident in the Oval Office. He refers to it as “horrible” and added that it “doesn’t get worse.”The Smollett family releases a statement: “Jussie was the victim of a violent and unprovoked attack. We want to be clear, this was a racial and homophobic hate crime. Jussie has told the police everything from the very beginning. His story has never changed, and we are hopeful they will find these men and bring them to justice.”Feb. 1: Mr. Smollett releases his first public statement through his publicist. It says: “Let me start by saying that I’m OK. My body is strong but my soul is stronger. More importantly, I want to say thank you. The outpouring of love and support from my village has meant more than I will ever be able to truly put into words.”Acknowledging some skepticism about his story on social media, Mr. Smollett adds, “I am working with authorities and have been 100 percent factual and consistent on every level. Despite my frustrations and deep concern with certain inaccuracies and misrepresentations that have been spread, I still believe that justice will be served.”The Chicago police superintendent, Eddie T. Johnson, says in an interview with a local television station: “We have to remember, he’s a victim. You know, so we have to treat it like he’s a victim. We have no reason to think that he’s not being genuine with us.”Feb. 2: Mr. Smollett appears in public for the first time since he reported the attack, performing a concert in West Hollywood.“I have so many words on my heart that I want to say, but the most important thing I can say is, thank you so much, and that I’m OK,” Mr. Smollett tells the crowd.Feb. 4: The Chicago police say the people of interest have not been identified yet but they are continuing to follow up on leads.Feb. 11: The department reacts to phone records that Mr. Smollett turned over to investigators. The police had asked Mr. Smollett for access to his phone because he had been in conversation with his manager when the incident occurred. Mr. Smollett provides the police with redacted records that they say “do not meet the burden for a criminal investigation.”Feb. 13: Two brothers of Nigerian descent, Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, are detained by the authorities after a flight back home to Chicago from Nigeria. Police officers raid their home and, according to CBS Chicago, remove items including an “Empire” script and two hats.Feb. 14: Mr. Smollett gives his first interview about the incident to “Good Morning America,” where he is adamant that he is telling the truth.“It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone Black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more,” Mr. Smollett tells ABC’s Robin Roberts. “A lot more.”He also says he is convinced that the men in the surveillance images were his attackers.“Because I was there,” Mr. Smollett says. “For me, when that was released, I was like, ‘OK, we’re getting somewhere.’ I don’t have any doubt in my mind that that’s them. Never did.”The Chicago police reveal publicly that at least one of the men detained has appeared as an extra on “Empire.” The department also says they “are not yet suspects.” Their lawyer, Gloria Schmidt, tells CBS Chicago: “They’re really baffled why they are people of interest. They really don’t understand how they even got information that linked them to this horrific crime. But they’re not guilty of it. They know that the evidence is going to prove them innocent. They send their best to Jussie.”The local news media releases its first reports that investigators are beginning to look at the possibility that this is a hoax, something the Chicago police dispute publicly.Feb. 15: In a whirlwind day, the detained brothers are identified as potential suspects by police, but that night are released without being charged. Investigators announce they are no longer considered suspects but do not say why.Feb. 16: The police say they are seeking to speak with Mr. Smollett again. Media outlets, including CNN, report that the two men have told investigators they were paid to take part in a hoax. Mr. Guglielmi says in a statement, “We can confirm that the information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the ‘Empire’ case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation.”Lawyers for Mr. Smollett release a statement saying, “As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with.”It added: “One of these purported suspects was Jussie’s personal trainer who he hired to ready him physically for a music video. It is impossible to believe that this person could have played a role in the crime against Jussie or would falsely claim Jussie’s complicity.”The lawyers say that Mr. Smollett will “continue to cooperate” and that they “have no inclination to respond to ‘unnamed’ sources inside of the investigation.”Feb. 20: Fox releases a statement in support of Mr. Smollett amid reports that his role was being reduced on “Empire.” Later in the day, the Chicago police announce that they consider Mr. Smollett a suspect in the filing of a false report.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More