CHICAGO — Attorneys for R. Kelly and his co-defendants presented one witness apiece Thursday morning after federal prosecutors rested their case-in-chief against the disgraced singer earlier this week.
But first, U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber denied the defendants’ requests 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 making his rulings, Leinenweber asked each defendant if they plan to take the stand on their own behalf.
Kelly, seated at the defense table in a gray suit, nodded as the judge explained his rights. When asked if he understood, he lowered his face mask to his chin and said, “Yes sir, I have, your honor.”
“No, I’m not going to testify,” he said.
Leinenweber then moved on to McDavid, who was sitting at a table directly in front of Kelly, not wearing a mask. He very eagerly said “I’m going to testify your honor,” before the judge even finished the question.
Brown said simply, “I choose not to.”
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
McDavid and 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.
Thursday’s first witness was Christopher G. Wilson on behalf of McDavid. Wilson, a former Chicago police officer who now works on Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s security detail, said he has been friends with McDavid for decades.
Back in 2001, McDavid told Wilson that Kelly was being blackmailed, and asked him to accompany private investigator Jack Palladino on a trip to Kansas City to interview a suspect in the blackmail, he testified.
Jurors previously heard from prosecution witness Charles Freeman that he was in Kansas City and met with Palladino after Kelly and McDavid reached out to him about recovering certain incriminating videotapes.
Wilson testified that McDavid was not present at the Kansas City meet-ups, nor was McDavid in that city at the time, to his knowledge.
On cross-examination, prosecutors emphasized that it was McDavid who hired Wilson for the job — not Palladino. And Wilson acknowledged that he did not witness any crimes, such as blackmail, on the trip. If he had, he would have been obligated to report it, since he was an off-duty police officer, he said.
Kelly’s attorneys called to the stand Merry Green, who was involved in planning the Expo for Today’s Black Woman in the late '90s and early 2000s.
Kelly accuser “Tracy” had testified that she encountered Kelly at such an expo in 1999, when she was 16.
However, Green testified that Kelly made a promotional appearance at the 2000 expo, not the 1999 event. In 2000, Tracy would have been 17, which is the Illinois age of consent.
On cross-examination, Green acknowledged that while Kelly wasn’t a featured artist at the 1999 expo, he could still have attended. But security would have notified her if “an artist of that size” were there, she said, and she doesn’t recall being notified.
Brown’s attorneys called former Kelly employee Tom Arnold to the stand. Arnold worked for the Chicago Trax studio beginning in the late '90s and started working for Kelly in 2003, he said.
Brown’s defense centers on the argument that he was such a low-level employee that he could not have had any knowledge of participating in a conspiracy. Arnold’s testimony appears to be a way to tell jurors about the day-to-day functions of lower-rung employees without having to risk putting Brown on the stand.
As an employee, Arnold routinely handled large amounts of cash without necessarily knowing what the money was for, he testified. And it was “common knowledge” that drivers were never supposed to talk to Kelly’s female guests, he said.
Arnold also testified last year at Kelly’s racketeering trial in Brooklyn, memorably noting that he was docked a week’s pay since he booked a male tour guide — not a female one — at Disney World.
Attorneys for McDavid also called to the stand Ronald Winters, who in the 2000s worked as a personal assistant to legendary criminal defense attorney Ed Genson. Genson represented Kelly during his Cook County case two decades ago; he died in 2020.
Winters testified that around 2007 a private investigator would drop off Kelly-related videotapes to Genson’s office, and Winters would play the tapes for Genson. All of them featured Kelly having sex with different women, none of whom appeared to be underage, to Winters’ eyes.
Once, McDavid brought a videotape to Genson’s office. When Winters played it for his boss, he saw that it featured Kelly having sex with two women, one of whom appeared to be his wife, Winters said.
McDavid’s defense has focused in part on an argument that Kelly wanted to recover one videotape because it featured his wife — not because it had child pornography on it. Prosecutors, however, allege that it showed Kelly having sexual contact with Lisa Van Allen and an underage “Jane.”
That tape — referred to as Video 4 in the indictment — has not been played for jurors. Prosecutors have said that’s because Kelly’s team successfully covered it up. The defense has asserted that’s because it never existed.
Defense attorneys have so far hinted at an eclectic hodgepodge of potential 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.
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean, who is representing Kelly, told the judge Wednesday that she intends to call record company executive Cathy Carroll, who, according to testimony, introduced one of the Kelly’s alleged minor victims to the singer when the teen interned for her in the late 1990s. Bonjean’s cross-examination on the topic disputed that timeline vigorously, asserting that Kelly actually met the accuser after she had reached the legal age of consent.
McDavid’s attorneys also want to show jurors a set of documents from the now-deceased Palladino, who dealt with Freeman regarding the recovery of certain video footage.
While Freeman testified that he sought out the videos at Kelly’s behest, McDavid’s defense is aiming to paint Freeman as a greedy extortionist.
The memos they are seeking to admit describe McDavid’s “perennial requests for more money” and note that — since Freeman failed a polygraph — a payment was not for the return of a tape but instead “a quid pro quo for information concerning various disloyal members of R. Kelly’s ‘posse.’”
In one memorable passage, Palladino describes Freeman as “a sleazy bottom-feeder who whines endlessly apparently out of the belief that being extremely annoying is a winning negotiating strategy.”
Bonjean, meanwhile, said Kelly is grateful for the support he’s received from fans and that he’s had the opportunity to challenge the witnesses against him in a court of law, rather than having them tell their stories in a "one-sided documentary.”
“It’s hard to listen to people tell falsehoods, and because you are perceived as this monster, you have lost your voice to say, 'No, that’s a lie,'” she said.
Prosecutors rested their case-in-chief 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.
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