Jussie Smollett sentenced to five months in jail, yells "I am innocent and I am not suicidal"

BuzzFeed News

A judge formally sentenced the former Empire star to 150 days in county jail today, part of a 30-month probationary sentence that includes him being $120,106 in restitution and $25,000 in fines following his conviction for falsely reporting he was the victim of a hate crime. “I believe that you did damage to real hate crimes — to hate crime victims,” Cook County Judge James Linn  told Smollett before announcing his sentence. The judge acknowledged that he could not say “for sure how much damage there was,” but he said he hoped that other victims would not be dissuaded from coming forward and that authorities would not be more skeptical of victims who are willing to report such crimes. Smollett declined to make a statement before his sentencing, but afterward shouted at the judge: "I am innocent and I am not suicidal. If anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself and you must all know that."