One of the jurors from the trial of Jussie Smollett has finally decided to speak out.
Smollett, an actor and musician well-known for his work on the hit television series “Empire,” was convicted Thursday on five of six counts of disorderly conduct, a Class 4 felony, for staging a hate-crime hoax against himself and then lying to police about it.
According to a juror who spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times, the jury members were cutting Smollett a break by acquitting him on the sixth charge.
“We all thought we were doing Jussie a favor,” said the juror, whose name was withheld by the newspaper.
Apparently, there was some confusion over the reasoning for the last charge and why it was “charged differently” than all of the others, the juror said, according to the Sun-Times.
In the juror’s opinion, if the last count had been charged the same, “I think we probably would have found him guilty” on all six counts.
While the first five counts were in relation to statements Smollett made to police on Jan. 29, 2019, immediately after the “attack,” the sixth statement was made weeks later, on Feb. 14, 2019, according to WMAQ-TV.
At a news conference following the verdict, special prosecutor Dan Webb suggested that the separate dates could have played a part in the jury’s decision to acquit on that count.
Nevertheless, Webb was pleased with the jury’s decision, calling it “a resounding message by the jury that Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did.”
This wasn’t because of any bias against Smollett, however.
The anonymous juror who spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times made it quite clear — every one of the jurors went into the trial with an open mind.
Some of the six men and six women on the panel had doubts as they entered into deliberations and wanted to make sure they had gone over all of the evidence before coming to a decision, the juror said.
“I just hope that [Smollett and his attorneys] know that we went in there with an open mind,” the juror said.
“I listened to both sides. We wanted to make sure that those who had doubts didn’t feel pressured.”
What really hammered the final nail into Smollett’s coffin was apparently his own testimony.
The anonymous juror said there were too many areas where Smollett’s testimony lacked credibility, according to the Sun-Times.
After weighing all of the evidence, the jury realized what the rest of us had known for months on end:
This guy was nothing more than a race-baiting huckster looking to cash in on a culture of victimhood.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
