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Actor Jussie Smollett has been sentenced to 150 days in jail for lying to police about a racist and homophobic attack that he orchestrated himself.
Cook County judge James Linn sentenced him to 30 months of felony probation, including 150 days in the county jail. The judge denied a request to suspend the sentence and ordered that Smollett be placed in custody immediately. He was also ordered to pay $120,106 in restitution to the city of Chicago.
Smollett loudly declared his innocence after the sentence was handed down.
“I am innocent. I could have said I am guilty a long time ago,” he shouted as sheriff’s deputies led him out of the courtroom.
The judge excoriated Smollett prior to delivering his sentencing decision and pronounced himself astounded by the defendant’s actions given given his multiracial family background and history working on behalf of social justice groups.
“For you now to sit here, convicted of hoaxing, hate crimes... the hypocrisy is just astounding,” Mr Linn said.
Before the sentence was handed down, Smollett’s defence attorney Nenye Uche asked the judge to limit the sentence to community service. He said Smollett “has lost nearly everything” in his career and finances and asked that his client be given time to make restitution if that is part of the sentence.
Witnesses for the state and Smollett testified at his sentencing. Chicago Police Supt David Brown submitted a statement that was read aloud by Samuel Mendenhall, a member of the special prosecution team.
Harmed ‘actual victims’
In the statement, Mr Brown, who became superintendent in April 2020 and was not with the city at the time of Smollett’s police report, said the actor’s false report of a hate crime harmed “actual victims” of such crimes.
Mr Brown asked that the city be compensated for its costs, saying the cost of investigating his claim could have been spent elsewhere in the city.
Smollett’s grandmother, testifying for the defence, asked Mr Linn not to include prison time in his sentence.
“I ask you, judge, not to send him to prison,” Molly Smollett (92) told the court. “If you do, send me along with him, OK?”
Smollett’s attorneys also read aloud letters from other supporters, including an organiser with Black Lives Matter, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and LaTanya and Samuel L Jackson that asked the judge to consider the case’s effect on Smollett’s life and career and to avoid any confinement as part of his sentence.
Other supporters spoke about worries that Smollett would be at risk in prison, specifically mentioning his race, sexual orientation and his family’s Jewish heritage. Smollett declined to make a statement at the hearing.
Final chapter
The sentencing could be the final chapter in a criminal case, subject to appeal, that made international headlines when Smollett, who is black and gay, reported to police that two men wearing ski masks beat him, and hurled racial and homophobic slurs at him on a dark Chicago street and ran off.
In December, Smollett was convicted in a trial that included the testimony of two brothers who told jurors Smollett paid them to carry out the attack, gave them money for the ski masks and rope and instructed them to fashion the rope into a noose.
Prosecutors said he told them what racist and homophobic slurs to shout, and to yell that Smollett was in “MAGA Country”, a reference to the campaign slogan of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. – AP