Just three months after a Chicago-based jury found him guilty of lying to police, Jussie Smollett has learned his fate.
The ‘Empire’ actor was sentenced to 30 months felony probation, $120,106 in restitution, a maximum fine of $25,000, and 150 days of his sentence spent in the Cook County jail, starting immediately.
“I am not suicidal, that is what I would like to say. I am not suicidal,” Smollet responded when asked if he had any questions about his sentence. “I am NOT suicidal. I am innocent. And I am not suicidal.”
Smollet continued, raising his voice and standing. “If I did this then it means I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years, and the fears of the LGBTQ community.”
“Your honor, I respect you and I respect the jury. But I did not do this and I am not suicidal. And, if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself, and you must all know that.”
“This is not for the public,” Judge James Linn said ahead of handing out the sentence, noting the public and media interest in Smollet’s proceedings. “The sentence handed down today is strictly for Mr. Smollett.”
Linn added that there was no punishment he could possibly hand out that would be any worse than what Smollett had already done to himself and his career through his own “misconduct and shenanigans,” accusing him of doing damage to real hate crime victims in the long term through what he further described as Smollett’s “arrogant and narcissistic,” “attention-seeking” actions.
“Your very name has become an adverb for lying,” Linn continued. “I can’t think of anything worse than that.”
Smollett, 39, was found guilty on five of six felony counts of disorderly conduct in early December 2021, one charge for each time he lied to police about the details of the fabricated attack in January 2019. He was found not guilty on a charge of lying to a detective over the same incident in February of that same year.
Disorderly conduct is a class 4 felony that has sentencing potential of up to three years in prison.
At the time of the ruling, a member of the prosecution team called the verdict “a resounding message by the jury that Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did.”
During the trial, details emerged pinpointing Jussie as the mastermind behind ideating and orchestrating a staged racist and homophobic attack on himself, set to take place in the early hours of January 19, 2019. Prosecutors proved that Smollett paid two brothers, initially hired as his fitness trainers, $3,500 to assist with the hoax, posing as his attackers. Lawyers say he instructed them to yell homophobic slurs and racial epithets, including the phrase ‘MAGA country” as a reference to support of then-president Donald Trump before wrapping an improvised noose around his neck.
The Associated Press reports that Smollett’s defense asserted that there was no hoax, and claimed the brothers committed a real homophobic attack against him and made up the story about his involvement, telling him that they would testify on his behalf and make the charges disappear if he paid them $1 million each.
As he exited the courtroom to begin serving his five months behind bars, Smollet raised his fist in the air and once again exclaimed “I am not suicidal! I am not suicidal, and I am innocent. I could have said that I was guilty a long time ago.”