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A popular actor walks on the street and is brutally reminded that, despite his fame and fortune, there are still places where his skin color and sexual orientation can put him in danger.
That was the story that ricocheted around the world after Jussie Smollett, a black and openly gay actor, reported to the Chicago police that he had been the victim of a hate crime.
Almost three years later, Smollett is on trial for orchestrating the whole thing.
He was charged with disorderly conduct after law enforcement and prosecutors said he lied to police about what happened in downtown Chicago in the early hours of January 29, 2019. He did not plead guilty.
The selection of the jury is to begin on Monday. Administrative offense, a Class 4 crime, carries a sentence of up to three years in prison, but experts say that if convicted, Smollett is more likely to be suspended and possibly given community service.
Smollett told police that he was walking home from a subway sandwich shop at 2:00 am when two men who recognized him on the TV show “Empire” began to hurl racist and homophobic slurs at him. He said the men hit him, put a makeshift noose around his neck and yelled, “This is MAGA land,” a reference to then-President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
The response to his reported attack underscored the increasingly polarized political landscape; Democratic politicians and others cited it as a shocking example of Trump-era bigotry and hatred, while Republicans accused liberals of rashly portraying the president’s supporters as racists.
Just weeks later came the breathtaking announcement that Smollett was hired to stage the attack in order to advance his career and secure a higher salary. And police said he hired two brothers from Nigeria who pretended to attack him for $ 3,500.
This made the limelight look even brighter on Smollett, but this time around he was vilified as someone willing to use one of the strongest symbols of racism in the United States to advance his career.
“The most hideous and despicable part of it, if it’s true, is the noose,” said Judge John Fitzgerald Lyke Jr., who is Black, during Smollett’s first appearance in court. “This symbol conjures so much evil in the history of this country.”
Smollett also became a national punchline. He was the subject of a Saturday Night Live sketch and a variety of black celebrities, from NBA analyst Charles Barkley to comedian Dave Chappelle, took turns making fun of him.
Then came the anger that Smollett’s fame gave him an influence beyond the reach of most. Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx reportedly communicated with a member of Smollett’s family at the request of former First Lady Obama’s former chief of staff at the beginning of the investigation.
Foxx pulled out of the case, then her office suddenly dropped the charges, and Foxx found herself at the center of a media firestorm as she disproved the suggestion that her office gave the TV star a break.
After a new report criticized her handling of the Jussie Smollett case, Illinois state attorney Kim Foxx is faced with demands for her opponent to step down. Patrick Fazio from NBC 5 reports.
All of this set the stage for what turned a simple question about Smollett’s innocence or guilt into a tangled legal saga that dragged on for nearly three years.
The process has been delayed in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic that stalled cases across the country for months. However, charges were also brought, dropped, and brought again by a special prosecutor who took over the case.
Smollett – whose career has now faded – will be in the media spotlight again this week, but this time he passes the forest of news cameras on his way to and from the courtroom.
The producers of “Empire,” in which he starred for four years, renewed his contract for the sixth and final season in 2019, but he never appeared on an episode. He has also not published any music or given any major musical performances.
However, he has made an independent film, funded by his own production company, which premieres at the American Black Film Festival this month. The film “B-Boy Blues” is an adaptation of a novel from 1994, the first in a series, about the life of gay black men in New York.
But what sounds like a bad movie is going to develop in court for the simple reason that a short movie is exactly what the authorities have long said Smollett wanted to do it.
The main witnesses will be brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who say Smollett wrote them a check to orchestrate the attack. They are expected to characterize Smollett as the star and director of an “attack” in front of a surveillance camera that he mistakenly believed would record the entire event.
And according to their lawyer, the brothers will also describe how Smollett drove them to a “dress rehearsal” where the incident was supposed to take place.
“He told them, ‘Here is a camera, there is a camera and this is where you will run away,'” said her lawyer, Gloria Rodriguez.
Associated Press reporter Andrew Dalton contributed from Los Angeles.
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