Jussie Smollett sentenced to 5 months jail

Former Empire star Jussie Smollett has been sentenced to five months in jail for concocting a hate crime hoax.

After Smollett alleged two men attacked him late one night by his Chicago apartment, with anti-gay and racist slurs and a noose, he was later convicted on five out of six charges of “disorderly conduct.”

Judge James Linn also ordered Smollett to pay $120,000 restitution to the city of Chicago, plus a $25,000 fine, and to serve 30 months of probation. The charges carried a maximum of three years in prison.

“You’ve turned your life upside down by your misconduct and shenanigans. You’ve destroyed your life as you knew it,” Linn said. “You wanted to get the attention and you were so invested in issues of social justice, and you knew this was a sore spot for everybody in this country… You were throwing a national pity party for yourself.”

Linn also called him a “charlatan,” and said the crime had exposed a side of his personality that is “profoundly arrogant and selfish and narcissistic.”

“You’ve turned yourself from riches to rags,” Linn said. “Your very name has become an adverb for lying.”

Once Linn issued the sentence, Smollett emphatically stated several times that he was not suicidal — and suggested that if he were found dead, it would not be by his own hand.

After the sentence was announced, Smollett stood up and said, “I am innocent and I am not suicidal.” Smollett continued to shout as he was led out of the courtroom and remanded to custody.

“If I did this it means I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans for over 400 years in this country, and the fears of the LGBT community,” Smollett said. “If anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself, and you must all know that.”

Smollett’s attorneys asked that the jail term be stayed, but Linn denied the request.

Smollett was written out of the final season of Empire after the hoax was uncovered.

Source: Variety