Jussie Smollett has been found guilty of staging a fake racist and anti-gay attack in Chicago and then lying about it to the police.
The jury decided that Smollett is guilty on five out of the six felony charges of disorderly conduct charges after deliberating for nine hours over a two-day period.
Smollett, 39, now faces up to three years in prison and a $25,000 fine. Some legal pundits differ on whether Smollett will actually serve any time, serve some months in jail, or if he will just be required to pay the fine and be sentenced to probation.
The guilty verdict comes nearly three years after Smollett reported that two men wearing red MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats and armed with rope and a bottle of bleach ambushed Smollett on the sub-freezing streets of downtown Chicago.
Smollett told the Chicago Police Department that, in January 2019, two White men dashed out of the night and beat him up, tied a rope around his neck, all while hurling virulent anti-gay and racist slurs at him.
Now the jury has decided that Smollett made the whole thing up, and worse, engineered a conspiracy to mislead the police, the public and his celebrity friends who originally supported his story.
