Black juror: Smollett's reaction to noose makes no sense

The lone Black juror on the panel that convicted Jussie Smollett of lying to Chicago police about what authorities say was a staged hate crime says he cannot get past how the actor put a noose around his neck when officers were coming to interview him

CHICAGO -- The only Black juror on the panel that convicted Jussie Smollett of lying to Chicago police said he couldn't get past what the actor did not do after he claimed attackers looped a noose around his neck: Rip it off and keep it off.

If others saw the noose as Smollett's clumsy effort to portray his attackers as racist, Andre Hope saw much more.

“As an African American person, I'm not putting that noose back on at all, " Andre Hope told WLS-TV. At trial, Smollett testified that after the attack in downtown Chicago in January 2019, he returned home and put the rope back around his neck so police who came to his apartment soon after could see it.

Hope was not the only Black person who struggled with Smollett's use of such a potent symbol of racism in the U.S. to convince authorities he was the victim of a hate crime.