In January 2019, the ‘Empire’ Jussie Smollett reported having been beaten by two people who yelled racial and homophobic insults.

The American actor Jussie Smollett was convicted on Thursday of five charges of the six he faced for having faked an alleged attack in Chicago (USA) in January 2019, described as racist and homophobic.

This was decided by a jury in Cook County , in the state of Illinois, after more than nine hours of deliberations on these charges, of which the former star of the Empire series had previously pleaded not guilty.

After deliberating for more than nine hours, the 12-person jury found that it had chosen to believe the accounts of two brothers who testified that Smollett had asked them to lightly injure him as part of a publicity stunt.

Smollett, 39, was found guilty of five of the six disorderly conduct charges under an Illinois state law that prohibits false reports to police , which could carry up to three years in prison and a $ 25,000 fine.

However, in the investigations it would have been discovered that everything was a hoax prepared by the actor, who wanted to impress the producers of the television series and strengthen his career .

This was precisely one of the points that the Prosecutor’s Office insisted on throughout the trial, which ended up convincing the Cook County jury. The first criminal charges against Smollett for a false report were dismissed in a controversial decision by the Attorney General for that county.

In a second instance, special prosecutor Dan Webb reviewed the handling of the case and got a special jury to approve six charges against the actor in February 2020 , for disorderly conduct and lying to the police about an alleged hate crime.

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