Jussie Smollett's attorney has requested his immediate release from jail, alleging that each second he remains behind bars puts him at risk of harm.

On Thursday (10 March), the former Empire star was sentenced to 150 days in prison for "selfishly, arrogantly, and narcissistically" orchestrating a hate crime fake, which the judge stated "devastated his life" and was created purely to fulfill his "craving" for publicity.

Smollett was charged with lying to city police about a racial and homophobic attack on 29 January 2019 in downtown Chicago by masked MAGA supporters.

According to Rolling Stone, Smollett's attorneys asserted that one of his siblings, also recorded as his emergency jail contact, received a threatening call threatening to harm the actor.

"I'm hoping that whatever they do to the guy in jail is exactly what they intend. They're going to take a broom handle and stuff that little [expletive] in there, and he's going to go, '[shrieking sound]'," a man says in a video of the call provided on Monday by the guilty actor's defense team (14 March).

The threat looked to reference a 1997 case involving police abuse against Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. Justin Volpe, a police officer, pled guilty in the case to sodomizing Louima in a police station restroom after arresting him for disorderly conduct outside a bar.

Additionally, Smollett's legal team stated that the actor has received "vicious threats" on social media, which "no doubt reflects the hatred and desire for physical harm toward Smollett that he may experience while incarcerated."

According to TMZ, the attorneys provided a sworn letter from a doctor claiming that Smollett's immune system is impaired and puts him at a higher risk of contracting Covid-19.

Smollett's family announced earlier this week that he has been placed in a psychiatric institution and is deemed a suicide risk, despite being mentally sound.

The Cook County Sheriff's Office did not directly respond to The Independent's questions about whether Smollett was being monitored for mental health issues. However, it did state in a statement that he was not being held in solitary confinement but was being kept "under constant observation" in his cell.