actor taking the stand in his defense today in chicago where he is charged on staging a racist, anti-gay attack on himself and lying about it to the police. ron allen has late details. reporter: nearly three years after jussie smollett first reported he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, the former empire actor testifying in his own defense today. charged with 6 counts of felony disorderly conduct for allegedly faking the attack and lying to police about it smollett telling the jury there was no hoax smollett seen in this police body camera video wearing the noose he told investigators the attackers put around his neck. you want to take it off or anything. yeah. reporter: after yelling slurs, beating him, throwing bleach on him and saying, this is maga country the prosecution star witnesses, two brothers, aspiring actors and associates of smollett, who say he recruited them to stage the attack,
johnson. 638 more murders compared to the previous three years. it s not progress in this city. and 80% of those individuals are people of color. so that s not progress, i m sorry,. ed: disorry, eddie, i can t e with you. reckless on the behalf of smollett. we have a serious race problem in this city, probably more so than any place else in the country. chicago calls its self-the most segregated city in the country. this was compared to throwing coals on grass. he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest ebbs tent of the law. he needs to pay back the city for all the money that was wasted on this investigation. and the thousands of man hours put into it. we need to actually complemencompliment thedetectivg work they did. part of the sentencing should be to heal the problems we have here in chicago. i agree with the last segment where we need
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being charged with a felony for filing a false police report. mark o mara is here to discuss, so is areva martin, author of make it rain. good evening to both of you. mark, we ll start with you. cnn received this statement on behalf of smollett. it says, today we witnessed an organized law enforcement spectacle that has no place in the american legal system. the presumption of innocence, a bedrock in the search for justice, was trampled upon at the expense of mr. smollett and notably on the eve of a mayoral election. mr. smollett is a young man of impeccable character and integrity who fiercely and solemnly maintains his innocence and feels betrayed by a system that apparently wants to skip due process and proceed directly to sentencing. what s your reaction? well, like i said before, if he did what is alleged to have been done, then he set back the civil rights movement a decade or more because of the way he sort of misused it. but we are far from that. so he is presumed innocen
here we go, tonight a statement on behalf of jussie smollett calling his arrest and court i want to talk about this case now. he s the author of words on the move. and i thank you for joining us. i read your article on this, and this is before you saw everything, right, that was laid out. this was five days ago. it s called what the just ae smollett story reveals. you call it victimhood chic. what do you mean? well, what i mean by that is that in a way this isn t surprising what he did. and so as culpable as he seems to be, and i m using seems only