Special prosecutors began their closing arguments in the seven-day trial about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, asking jurors to find the former « Empire » actor guilty of the six counts of disorderly conduct he faces in connection with the alleged hoax.
Actor Jussie Smollett’s fate will soon be handed over to a Cook County jury tasked with determining whether the actor lied to police when he said he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack nearly three years ago. Special prosecutors began their closing arguments in the seven-day trial about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, asking jurors to find the former “Empire” actor guilty of the six counts of disorderly conduct he faces in connection with the alleged hoax. “We have proven this by overwhelming evidence,” Special Prosecutor Dan Webb told the jury. Webb’s opening statement last week promised to prove Smollett violated the law but also pointed at the serious, wider implications the actor’s allegedly false statements have had. “When he reported the fake hate crime as a real hate crime, that violated Illinois law,” Webb said. The veteran attorney added it was also “just plain wrong that Mr. Smollett, as a successful Black actor, openly gay person, would denigrate something as serious as a hate crime and then just pretend one occurred when it didn’t occur.” Defense attorneys countered that Smollett was innocent and the Chicago Police Department took the word of two bodybuilding brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who claimed the actor was the true mastermind behind the allegedly staged attack in a rush to judgment.
