R. Kelly found not guilty

Jurors deliberated for less than one day; singer faced 15 years in prison




R. Kelly was acquitted of all charges Friday
after less than a day of deliberations in his child pornography trial,
ending a six-year ordeal for the R&B superstar.

Kelly
dabbed his face with a handkerchief and hugged each of his four
attorneys after the verdict — not guilty on all 14 counts — was read.
The Grammy award-winning singer had faced 15 years in prison if
convicted.
Minutes
later, surrounded by bodyguards, he left the courthouse without
comment. Dozens of fans screamed and cheered as he climbed into a
waiting SUV.
“All I heard (from Kelly) while those 14
verdicts were being read was ‘Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank
you, Jesus,”’ said Sam Adam Jr., one of his attorneys.

Prosecutors
had argued that a video tape mailed to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002
showed Kelly engaged in graphic sex acts with a girl as young as 13 at
the time. Both Kelly, 41, and the now 23-year-old alleged victim had
denied they were the ones on the tape. Neither testified during the
trial.
“Robert
said all along that he believed in our system and he believed in God —
and that when all the facts came out in court, he would be cleared of
these terrible charges,” according to a statement from his publicist,
Allen Mayer. “But he never dreamed it would take six and a half years.
This has been a terrible ordeal for him and his family and at this
point all he wants to do is move forward and put it behind him.”



Was Kelly on the tape?

The
prosecution’s star witness was a woman who said she engaged in
three-way sex with Kelly and the alleged victim. Defense attorneys
argued the man on the tape didn’t have a large mole on his back; Kelly
has such a mole.
The
monthlong trial centered on whether Kelly was the man who appears on a
sexually graphic, 27-minute videotape at the heart of the case, and
whether a female who also appears on it was underage.
Over
seven days presenting their case, prosecutors called 22 witnesses,
including several childhood friends of the alleged victim and four of
her relatives who identified her as the female on the video.
In
just two days, Kelly’s lawyers called 12 witnesses. They included three
relatives of the alleged victim who testified they did not recognize
her as the female on the tape.
Assistant
Cook County State’s Attorney Shauna Boliker said she believed the
female on the tape was a victim, not a prostitute as the defense had
contended.
“This
shows the world how difficult this crime is to prosecute,” she said.
“It also takes the soul of the victim, the heart of the victim.”
Kelly
won a Grammy in 1997 for “I Believe I Can Fly,” and is known for such
raunchy hits as “Bump N’ Grind,” “Ignition,” and for “Trapped in the
Closet,” a multipart saga about the sexual secrets of an ever-expanding
cast of characters.
Of
the 12 jurors, nine were men and three were women; eight were white and
four were black. They included the wife of a Baptist preacher from
Kelly’s Chicago-area hometown, Olympia Fields, as well as a compliance
officer for a Chicago investment firm and a man in his 60s who
emigrated from then-Communist Romania nearly 40 years ago.


Kelly still has a huge following

Despite
his legal troubles, Kelly — who rose from poverty on Chicago’s South
Side to become a star singer, songwriter and producer — still retains a
huge following, and his popularity has arguably grown in recent years.
The
singer has released more than half a dozen albums, most of them selling
over a million copies. He’s also had a multitude of hits and gone on
tours. Kelly has a new song, “Hair Braider,” out now, and is due to
release a new album in July.
Kelly,
always meticulously dressed in a suit and tie, appeared tense at times
during the trial, furrowing his brow. He seemed particularly ill at
ease when prosecutors played the sex tape in open court after opening
arguments.
In the
video, entered into evidence as “People’s Exhibit No. 1,” a man has sex
with a young female, who is naked for most of the recording. She is
often blank-faced. The man speaks to her in a hushed voice, and she
calls him “Daddy.”
In one scene, alluded to in one count of the indictment, the man urinates on the female.
The
issue of whether there was or wasn’t a fingernail-sized mole on the
man’s lower was a subject of hours of testimony. A defense witness told
jurors there was no mole on his back, proving it’s not Kelly, who has
such a mole. But a prosecution witness displayed freeze frames of the
video where a dark spot seemed to appear as the man turns to take off
his pants.
One
surreal moment came when a defense expert played a segment of the tape
he doctored showing two headless bodies engaging in sex. The defense
said that backed their argument that Kelly’s likeness could have been
computer-generated.
Cross examination was often heated. Several witnesses cried on the stand.
The
star prosecution witness, Lisa Van Allen, became teary eyed as she told
jurors she engaged in several three-way sexual encounters with Kelly
and the alleged victim, including once on a basketball court. Kelly
videotaped the trysts, she said.
Van Allen also claimed Kelly used to carry a duffel bag stuffed full of his homemade sex tapes.
The
defense called several witnesses in a bid to discredit Van Allen,
accusing her of trying to extort money from Kelly. Under
cross-examination, Van Allen admitted she once stole Kelly’s $20,000
diamond-studded watch from a hotel.