US actor Jussie Smollett convicted of staging attack and lying to police

The verdict came after a roughly one-week trial in which two brothers testified that Smollett recruited them to fake an attack on him near his home in central Chicago in January 2019

Actor Jussie Smollett arrives with his mother Janet at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago. Picture: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Former Empire actor Jussie Smollett has been convicted on five of six charges that he staged an anti-gay, racist attack on himself nearly three years ago and then lied to Chicago police about it.

He was acquitted on one count.