Jussie Smollett’s trial begins with the prosecutor alleging a fraudulent hate crime and the actor’s defense insisting the case was a ‘tremendous rush to decision’.

“I want you to attack me, but when you hit me, I want you to pull your punches a little bit because I don’t want to get seriously hurt,” Webb told the Smollett brothers. Smollett instructed him to put a rope around her neck to “make it look like a lynching and like a hate crime,” Webb said.