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 Jurors heard closing arguments
in the case and spent about 2-1/2 hours
deliberating before being sent home for the day.
"Facts matter. Truth matters. Evidence still
matters," prosecutor Sam Mendenhall told the
panel in his summation. "Follow the evidence
where it leads."
An attorney representing Smollett, Nenye Uche,
said in his closing remarks that the
prosecution's case against his client was "built
like a house of cards."
"And we all know what happens to a house of
cards when you apply a little pressure," Uche
said, telling jurors to be "constitutional
warriors" when they deliberate.
Smollett, 39, who is Black and openly gay, faces
six felony counts of disorderly conduct in Cook
County Circuit Court over accusations that he
made false reports to the police.
He has denied faking the attack and pleaded not
guilty https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-jussie-smollett-idINKCN20I19I
in February 2020. He took the stand this week
and told the jury that "there was no hoax,"
according to NBC.
The case became a touchstone in the culture wars
inflamed during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Celebrities and others rushed to support
Smollett when he first made the accusations in
early 2019 that he was the victim of a hate
crime and that his attackers had shouted: "This
is MAGA country," a reference to Trump's slogan
- "Make America Great Again."
Smollett told police he had been accosted on a
darkened street by two masked strangers in
January 2019. According to Smollett's account,
his assailants threw a noose around his neck and
poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and
homophobic slurs and expressions of support for
Trump.
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 A month later, police arrested
Smollett, accusing him of paying two brothers
$3,500 to stage the attack in a hoax aimed at
gaining public sympathy and raising his
show-business profile. During
his testimony on Monday, Smollett contradicted
the testimony of two brothers, Abimbola and
Olabinjo Osundairo, who
told the court last week that Smollett paid them
to stage a phony attack.
Smollett's acting career has faded since the
incident. He lost his role as a
singer-songwriter on "Empire," a Fox television
hip-hop drama that ended a five-year run in
2020.
His case took an unexpected turn in the spring
of 2019 when the Cook County state's attorney's
office dropped a 16-count indictment against him
in exchange for Smollett forfeiting his $10,000
bond without admitting wrongdoing.
The dismissal drew criticism from then-Mayor
Rahm Emanuel and the city's police
superintendent, who called the reversal a
miscarriage of justice. A five-month
investigation concluded that prosecution of
Smollett was warranted.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien; Additional
reporting by Brad Brooks and Dan Whitcomb;
Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)
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