(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- For the second consecutive summer, a federal jury has convicted Chicago-born R&B superstar R. Kelly.
The jury on Wednesday convicted the 55-year-old Kelly on six of 13 counts in his indictment, including counts alleging he recorded his sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl in the late 1990s after the girl asked him to be her godfather.
Now in her late 30s, that woman was also the alleged victim in Kelly’s earlier 2008 state-court trial in Cook County.
The jury acquitted Kelly on one count alleging the production of a video allegedly depicting a sexual encounter between Kelly, the 14-year-old girl and another woman, Lisa Van Allen.
The jury also acquitted Kelly of counts alleging a conspiracy to rig Kelly’s 2008 trial and to hunt down incriminating videos while Kelly faced prosecution in the 2000s.
Finally, the jury acquitted Kelly of counts alleging he enticed two underage girls into criminal sexual activity. They were known in court as Tracy and Brittany.
Kelly’s co-defendants, former business manager Derrel McDavid and former assistant Milton “June” Brown, were acquitted on all counts.
Kelly sat, shoulders hunched, showing no reaction as the verdict was read. His attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, gave exaggerated nods as the not guilty verdicts came in.
Later, when the judge re-read the verdict, she mouthed the numbers of the not guilty counts.
McDavid shot up and raised both arms in the air and said, “Yes!” He grabbed lawyer Vadim Glozman in a bear hug.
As the jury left, McDavid leaned across the defense table to embrace Kelly, who leaned forward to receive the hug.
Brown also walked over to Kelly and hugged him quickly, then backed away as marshals stepped toward them. Kelly walked out briskly, escorted by a trio of marshals, turning to glance back.
The decision comes at the end of a month-long trial featuring roughly 30 witnesses, including four women who said Kelly sexually abused them when they were teenagers in the 1990s.
Jurors viewed graphic videos at the heart of the feds’ case against Kelly, and they heard that Kelly enlisted others to hunt such videos down when he first faced prosecution in the 2000s.
Still, an aggressive alliance of defense attorneys spent the last several weeks working to undermine the feds at every turn, hoping to inject serious doubt into the jurors’ minds.
Kelly is already serving a 30-year sentence for his racketeering conviction last year in New York. Federal prosecutors in Chicago and New York revealed twin indictments against the superstar in July 2019, and authorities effectively ended his freedom when they arrested him outside of Trump Tower in Chicago that month.
His New York conviction is expected to keep him behind bars until at least his late 70s.
In the Chicago trial, Kelly faced charges alleging child pornography, obstruction of justice and the enticement of minors into criminal sexual activity. The case involved five accusers, four videos, 13 counts and 24 years of accusations dating back to 1996.
On trial alongside Kelly was McDavid and Brown. Kelly and Brown declined to testify, but McDavid spent more than two days on the witness stand answering questions in his own defense.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Pozolo told jurors during closing arguments that “Robert Kelly abused many girls over many years. He committed horrible crimes against children. And he didn’t do it alone.”
Defense attorney Bonjean told them Kelly “did some beautiful things when it came to making music, and he should not be stripped of every bit of humanity that he has.”
Central to Kelly’s latest trial was the testimony of a woman known to jurors as “Jane.” Though she denied for years that she appeared on the notorious video that led to Kelly’s first trial on child pornography charges in 2008, Jane finally took the stand last month to testify against him.
Now in her late 30s, Jane said the singer began to sexually abuse her when she was around 14 and Kelly was in his early 30s. She said it began after she asked him to be her godfather. She told jurors that three videos at issue in Kelly’s latest trial depicted her abuse. Among them was the same video at the center of Kelly’s 2008 trial.
That video was sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002. The newspaper turned it over to police.
After hearing from Jane, jurors viewed 17 clips from the three videos. Though their monitors were blocked from public view, the audio could still be heard in the courtroom, including a female voice repeatedly referring to her “14-year-old” body.
As the trial progressed, jurors heard from three women who also testified about sexual encounters involving Kelly and Jane when Jane was underage, corroborating Jane’s testimony.
One of them was Van Allen, a former girlfriend and longtime accuser of Kelly’s who appeared in the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly.” She testified along with two others — Charles Freeman and Keith Murrell — about attempts to track down videos of Kelly and Jane amid Kelly’s child-pornography prosecution in the 2000s.
All three testified under immunity deals.
Related
Related
Related
