Actor Jussie Smollett is scheduled to return to court in Chicago on Thursday to learn if a judge will sentence him to time behind bars for lying to police about a racist and homophobic attack that he orchestrated or allow him to remain free.
FILE - Former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett leaves the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago, Monday Feb. 24, 2020. Smollett is returning to a Chicago courtroom Thursday, March 10, 2022 for sentencing with just two questions hanging over his head: Will he admit that he lied about a racist homophobic attack and will a judge send him to jail?
CHICAGO — Actor Jussie Smollett is scheduled to return to court on Thursday, where he will learn if a judge will order him locked up forSmollett, who is expected to continuein January 2019, faces up to three years in prison for each of the five felony counts of disorderly conduct — the charge filed for lying to police — of which he was convicted. He was acquitted on a sixth count.
Smollett’s lead attorney has said that he’ll ask the judge to dismiss the charges before sentencing. But judges rarely grant such motions. That meansin a criminal case, subject to appeal, that made international headlines when Smollett, who is Black and gay, reported to police that two men wearing ski masks beat him, and hurled racial and homophobic slurs at him on a dark Chicago street and ran off.
Smollett, who knew the men from his work on the television show “Empire” that filmed in Chicago, testified that he did not recognize them and did not know they were the men attacking him.
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