His defense team said it will appeal the verdict.
brothers’ testimony and evidence that they were paid by Smollett — who is Black and gay — to stage a fake hate crime attack to garner sympathetic media coverage.
indicted Smollett in February of 2020.
While convicted on five of the six charges, Smollett was acquitted on one count of felony disorderly conduct.
The next phases of the case will address Smollett’s potential punishment as well as his opportunity to appeal.
Sentencing awaits
A disorderly conduct charge for a false crime report is a Class 4 felony and punishable by up to 3 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. Cook County Judge James Linn will have discretion in imposing a concurrent or consecutive sentence for each of the five counts at a later date.
CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson said the judge could give Smollett probation yet Smollett “exposed himself to jail time” when he testified in court.
“When you testify in a case, the judge now gets a sense of what you said,” Jackson said. “What Jussie Smollett said was resoundingly rejected by that jury. The jury did not buy what he was selling. That’s not lost upon a judge. You came into the courtroom and fabricated.”
CNN’s Don Lemon on Thursday that he believes Smollett will face time in prison because he doubled-down on the lie during testimony, required police to use resources during their investigation, and because the hoax itself could
undermine victims of actual hate crimes.
“There are people legitimately who were the victims of hate crimes, and how do you diminish them by coming up with something that’s a farce? That’s troubling and you have to punish that,” Jackson said.
“When you’re really on trial for telling a lie and then you compound that by actually lying, it makes a judge — who sits in judgment of you when you’re sentenced — really troubled,” he said of Smollett taking the stand.
Nenye Uche, Smollett’s attorney, said he “respectfully disagrees” with the jury’s verdict and that the case will be won on appeal.
“He (Smollett) is 100% confident that this will be reversed on appeal,” Uche said. “At the end of the day, we believe justice will prevail. We don’t believe it was done today but we’re very confident that he will be cleared and he will be found to be innocent.”
Uche said Smollett was disappointed but that he was hopeful to get a “fair result” in appellate court.
The City of Chicago said in a statement Thursday that it “intends to continue to pursue its lawsuit” to hold Smollett accountable.
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