The stage has been set for one last bitter legal battle Monday in the latest trial of R&B superstar R. Kelly, when lawyers are expected to deliver closing arguments on the 25th floor of Chicago’s federal courthouse in the Loop.
Once it’s over, the jury will consider whether to convict Kelly based on allegations that he sexually abused a 14-year-old girl in a notorious video that first surfaced 20 years ago.
A state-court jury acquitted Kelly in 2008 when he faced child-pornography charges based on the same video. But unlike in 2008, the alleged victim in that videotape has now taken the stand and testified that Kelly abused her repeatedly when she was a teenager in the 1990s.
“I became exhausted with living with his lies,” that woman, now in her 30s, told the jury.
But her claims amount to just a fraction of the allegations Kelly faces this time around. When prosecutors face the jury Monday, they will also ask jurors to convict Kelly based on three additional videos that allegedly depict Kelly’s abuse of the same victim when she was 14.
They will ask jurors to convict Kelly for sexually abusing four additional accusers. And, they will ask jurors to convict Kelly and two co-defendants of conspiracies to rig Kelly’s 2008 trial and hunt down incriminating videos of Kelly when he faced that prosecution.
“Kelly had another side,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Julien told jurors during opening statements more than three weeks ago. “A hidden side. A dark side.”
The trial in the ceremonial courtroom of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse has lasted four weeks and featured testimony from more than 30 witnesses. It ended with more than two days of testimony from former Kelly business manager Derrel McDavid, who is accused with Kelly of thwarting the 2008 trial.
On trial with them now is former Kelly assistant Milton “June” Brown, who is charged in the conspiracy to track down videos allegedly depicting child pornography. Kelly is already serving a 30-year federal prison sentence for his racketeering conviction last year in New York.
Defense attorneys for Kelly and McDavid have spent the last month attacking the evidence and seeking to undermine the credibility of key witnesses, including some of the women who testified that Kelly sexually abused them decades ago.
They have also been successful the last few days in convincing U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber to bar evidence that prosecutors wanted to present based on McDavid’s lengthy testimony. First, the judge barred evidence related to late Kelly protege Aaliyah Haughton, who Kelly married in 1994 when she was 15 and he was 27.
Though McDavid testified he had no reason in the 2000s to think Kelly had sexually abused underage girls, evidence in Kelly’s New York trial showed that McDavid was involved in bribing a “welfare office” worker to obtain a fake ID for Aaliyah so the marriage could go forward.
Then, Friday, the judge refused to let prosecutors introduce evidence related to Kelly’s 2003 child-pornography arrest in Florida after McDavid testified that he only considered Kelly’s prosecution in Chicago amid his conduct in the 2000s. The charges in Kelly’s Florida case were dropped.
Finally, prosecutors said late Friday they wanted to call Aaliyah’s uncle, former Kelly manager Barry Hankerson, to testify before closing arguments Monday. Leinenweber said he is under pressure to finish the trial and would not let testimony drag on.
Questioned earlier this week by his lawyer, McDavid insisted he didn’t initially believe repeated claims of sexual abuse leveled against Kelly in the 2000s. However, he eventually acknowledged that he’d “learned a lot of things” during the last few weeks of trial and said, “as I stand here today, I’m embarrassed.”
Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeannice Appenteng tried to cast McDavid in a different light, pointing out that the string of claims against Kelly led to financial settlements.
“It was about protecting your boss and protecting your pocket,” Appenteng insisted.
“No ma’am, it was not about protecting my pocket,” McDavid said.
The prosecutor also pushed McDavid about whether he made any attempt to get to the bottom of the claims. McDavid acknowledged that he spoke with Kelly and an attorney about the allegations, but he said he didn’t look into it further. When he learned law enforcement had obtained the tape that led to Kelly’s 2008 trial, Appenteng asked McDavid whether he asked prosecutors about it.
“That wasn’t my job, no,” McDavid said.
Later, when questioned again by his attorney, McDavid noted that a well-known private investigator had been hired by Kelly’s team “to investigate the entire thing.”
