Jussie Smollett Trial Verdict: Live Updates

What happened on the very cold night when Jussie Smollett was attacked — the physical details of the assault — have not been a matter of much debate at the trial, as both sides have focused on motive.

Mr. Smollett testified that at about 2 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2019, he was walking home from getting a sandwich at Subway, talking to his manager on the phone with one earbud in, when he heard someone yelling racist and homophobic slurs at him.

A person hit him in the face, Mr. Smollett said, which led to a tussle on the ground. Then, suddenly, the attacker ran away, and Mr. Smollett noticed that another person was with him, he said. As he was walking up a staircase toward his apartment, Mr. Smollett testified, he noticed a rope was around his neck, and later, that his clothing smelled like bleach.

Mr. Smollett’s creative director at the time, Frank Gatson, who was at Mr. Smollett’s apartment, wanted to call the police, but Mr. Smollett said he resisted.

“I am a Black man in America,” he testified. “I do not trust police. Sorry, that is the truth.”

But Mr. Gatson did call the police, and when they arrived, Mr. Smollett still had the rope around his neck. He told the court he had taken it off in the apartment but Mr. Gatson suggested that he should put it back on so the police could see what had happened.

Later, Mr. Smollett went to the hospital to have the bruising and swelling on his face looked at. He told a detective that he could tell one of the attackers was white through the eyeholes in the ski mask that he was wearing, Detective Kimberly Murray testified. In a later interview with detectives, he would say they were pale-skinned, which the police cited as an inconsistency in his account.

“With the things that were being said, I made the assumption they were white,” Mr. Smollett said in court.

Surveillance footage and ride-share data from that night led the police to Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, brothers who had both appeared in minor roles on “Empire,” the show that Mr. Smollett starred in.

The Osundairos testified that they had planned with Mr. Smollett to attack him earlier in the night, but Mr. Smollett’s flight back to Chicago was delayed. The brothers arrived at 2 a.m. at a spot they had agreed on, but Mr. Smollett was not there so they waited on a bench across the street, Olabinjo Osundairo said in court.

Olabinjo Osundairo testified that when Mr. Smollett arrived, his brother tussled with Mr. Smollett on the ground. Olabinjo Osundairo said that he put the rope around the actor’s face and poured the bleach from a hot sauce bottle.

About two weeks after the attack, the Osundairo brothers were arrested at the airport and later told the police that everything had been staged.

— Julia Jacobs and Mark Guarino