Jussie Smollett is finally getting his day in court.
The former “Empire” star’s criminal trial kicked off Monday morning in Chicago with jury selections nearly three years after he claimed he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack on a frigid night in January 2019.
The actor is facing six felony counts of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report after police claimed Smollett staged the hate crime in a bid to get him a higher salary on the set of the hit Fox drama.
By late afternoon, Judge James Linn had sworn in 15 jurors, including 12 regular panelists and three alternates after he asked them a series of questions about their knowledge of the case, civic groups they belong to and whether or not they’ve watched “Empire” or “TMZ”, the Chicago Tribune reported. Opening arguments in the case were slated to kick off around 4:45 p.m. local time.
Eight men and seven women have been selected for the panel, including a man who works for a credit union and emigrated from Iraq more than a decade ago, a woman who works as a counselor at a behavioral hospital and another woman who admitted to have watched “Empire” in the past and said she enjoys drag racing, the outlet reported.
At the beginning of the selection process, Linn asked the potential jurors if they’ve heard about the Smollett saga and five raised their hands. A few said they’d seen TMZ before and a couple said they’d watched “Empire” in the past.
At least one woman was dismissed after she told Linn she may not be able to be fair because her daughter is gay. She told the judge she’d done research on the case after she heard about Smollett’s alleged attack because she was fearful for her daughter’s safety.
At the center of the trial are two Nigerian brothers — Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo — who met Smollett on the set of “Empire” and will testify as the prosecution’s star witnesses that he paid them $3,500 to stage the hate crime and pose as his assailants.
If convicted on the class 4 felony charges, Smollett could face up to three years in jail but experts have said the harshest punishment he’s likely to face is probation and possibly some community service.
In the early morning hours of January 29, 2019, Smollett, who is black and gay, told police he was walking back to his apartment in Downtown Chicago after picking up food from a nearby Subway restaurant when two assailants beat him up, poured bleach on him and stuck a noose around his neck.
The actor claimed the attackers were white, yelled racist and homophobic slurs and told him “This is MAGA country!” before disappearing into the night.
The alleged hate crime sparked international outrage but soon, cracks in Smollett’s story began to emerge and doubt began to rise. He had told police he was on the phone when the attack happened but was slow to turn over his cellular records when requested.
His own neighbors cast doubt on the story, saying such vitriol is unheard of in the ultra-blue city, and when police narrowed down their suspects, they turned out to be two black men that knew Smollett — the Osundairo brothers — even though the actor claimed his assailants were white.
The Osundairos were taken into custody but released after they told police Smollett had paid them to stage the attack because he was dissatisfied with his salary on the set of “Empire”.
A few days later, Smollett was hit with 16 felony counts for filing a false police report and was lambasted by the city’s then-top cop Eddie Johnson, who said the star “took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career.”
But in a stunning reversal, Chicago prosecutors dropped all charges against Smollett in an emergency, unannounced hearing on March 26, 2019 after he agreed to forfeit his $10,000 bond and showed proof that he’d completed two days of community service.
The decision from State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to drop the charges was widely criticized and a former state appellate judge, Sheila O’Brien, managed to convince a judge that a special prosecutor needed to be appointed to investigate the office’s handling of the case.
In a scathing ruling that summer, Judge Michael Toomin declared Foxx’s case was void from start to finish after she failed to properly recuse herself and appointed a special prosecutor to probe how the case was handled, and determine if new charges should be brought.
In February 2020, special prosecutor Dan Webb announced a new, six-count felony indictment against the actor and nearly two years later, the trial is now underway and is expected to last a week.
The prosecution will rely heavily on testimony from the Osundairo brothers while the defense is expected to attack their credibility and potentially make the claim that they intended to attack Smollett, and then said it was a setup so they wouldn’t be prosecuted.
Buried in hundreds of pages of police records released after charges were originally dropped against Smollett were text records between the actor and one of the brothers showing an intimate friendship. Attorneys for Smollett previously claimed that the brothers are homophobic and the attack was potentially staged as a test to prove they were against the actor’s status as a gay man.
Also in the police records is a statement from a woman who lived close to the crime scene and told cops she saw a white man with “reddish brown hair” who looked like he was waiting for someone and appeared to have a “rope” on him on the night of the attack.
A security guard also claimed that he saw a man who appeared to be white running away from the crime scene on the same night, which together would back up Smollett’s claims that he saw pale or white skin around the eyes of one of his masked attackers.
Tina Glandian, one of Smollett’s attorneys, suggested during a March 2019 appearance on NBC’s “Today” show that one of the brothers could have used white makeup to convince Smollett he was white.
It is unclear if the actor will take the witness stand but the phone records and surveillance video from more than four dozen cameras that show the brothers’ movements on the night of the attack could be presented to jurors.
Both sides are also expected to zero in on a $3,500 check labeled “nutrition/workout program” that Smollett paid the brothers. His team has previously said the check was paid to the brothers for personal training services while prosecutors claim it was the payoff for staging the attack.
“I would assume the defense is going to zero in on that,” said Joe Lopez, a prominent defense attorney who isn’t involved with the case.
“If they texted messages regarding training sessions, checks [Smollett] wrote them for training, photographs, the defense would use all of that.”
Smollett’s attorneys haven’t addressed how they’ll confront the evidence and declined comment ahead of jury selections.
With Post Wires
