CHICAGO — The federal judge R. Kelly’s federal child pornography trial is scheduled to take up requests by the disgraced R&B star and his two co-defendants to acquit them of all charges before the jury even gets the case.
The motions for judgment of acquittal, filed at the conclusion of the prosecution’s case on Tuesday, are routine in criminal trials and almost always denied. At the very least, they are meant to preserve issues for a possible appeal down the road.
After U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber rules on the motions, all eyes will turn to the defendants, who are scheduled to begin presenting their cases on Thursday.
The jury has so far heard mention of a eclectic hodgepodge of potential defense witnesses, including disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti, former Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis and the former lead prosecutor on the case, Angel Krull, who exchanged emails with the star witness that defense attorneys suggested were inappropriate.
Lawyers for Kelly’s former business manager, Derrel McDavid, promised in their opening statement to jurors that he will take the stand in his own defense.
Kelly’s attorney’s, meanwhile, have been silent on whether the singer will testify, but it would seem to be extremely unlikely given the nature of the charges and the exposure to cross-examination.
In her motion for acquittal filed Tuesday night, Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, wrote that the government failed to present sufficient evidence showing the singer “knowingly” coerced his goddaughter into sexually illicit conduct “for the purpose of” producing child pornography.
Bonjean also argued there was no evidence that the graphic videotapes made by Kelly of him allegedly sexually assaulting the girl, who was 14 at the time, “ever left the state of Illinois,” which is one of the elements prosecutors must prove to sustain a conviction on the child pornography counts.
“In fact, it is undisputed that the tapes are copies made by someone, but the government could not establish where the tapes were copied or by whom,” Bonjean wrote. “The government simply did not prove that the tapes were transported in interstate or foreign commerce.”
Regarding other counts of conspiracy and receipt of child pornography, Bonjean said the evidence was lacking. She also brought up a crucial theory of the defense — that the effort by Kelly and McDavid to buy back a sex tape had nothing to do with underage girls, but instead involved Kelly’s then-wife and another adult woman.
“The government’s evidence, even in its best light, failed to show (Kelly) specifically sought to receive child pornography, rather than any embarrassing sex tapes — such as a threesome video involving his ex-wife,” the motion stated.
McDavid’s attorneys, Beau Brindley and Vadim Glozman, argued that the government’s case had multiple “fatal flaws,” including statute of limitation issues and witnesses who were unreliable and had changed their stories multiple times over the years.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
McDavid and another former Kelly employee, Milton “June” Brown, are charged in an alleged scheme to buy back incriminating sex tapes that had been taken from Kelly’s collection and hide years of alleged sexual abuse of underage girls.
Prosecutors rested their case-in-chief on Tuesday after calling some 25 witnesses over 10 days of testimony, including four women who said that Kelly had sexually abused them when they were underage. A fifth alleged minor victim mentioned in the indictment was not called to testify for reasons that so far have not been explained.
The trial’s first week focused on “Jane,” who identified herself as the girl being sexually abused by the then-superstar in three separate videos from the 1990s.
One of those videos became the subject of Kelly’s 2008 Cook County trial, during which he was acquitted of child pornography charges because, prosecutors now allege, Kelly and his associates went to great lengths to keep “Jane” quiet and recover other incriminating footage.
Witnesses last week largely focused on those efforts. Three people testified that Kelly’s team paid them to bring him videos of his homemade child pornography while he was awaiting his Cook County trial. Defense attorneys, during lengthy cross-examinations, have challenged their stories as inconsistent and tried to paint them as unreliable extortionists.
Jurors on Monday heard from two other women who testified about their sexual contact with Kelly while they were underage. Pauline said she had sexual contact with the disgraced singer dozens if not hundreds of times when she was underage, and Tracy — who testified using only her first name — told jurors in extensive detail about Kelly’s sexual abuse and assault of her when she was 16.
A fourth alleged victim, Nia, testified Tuesday that Kelly sexually abused her in a Minneapolis hotel room in 1996, when she was 15, and also later in his recording studio in Chicago.
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