CHICAGO — The second week of R. Kelly’s Chicago federal trial continued Tuesday with cross-examination of Lawrence Berkland, a lie-detector test administrator, as prosecutors outlined an alleged conspiracy to cover up Kelly’s alleged sexual misconduct before his Cook County criminal trial.
Berkland first took the stand late Monday and said he was hired by an attorney in August 2001 to test someone about whether he had made copies of a certain videotape, and whether it was the only videotape he had. Berkland gave the unidentified man three tests and he passed all three, he said.
The test subject was relatively uncooperative at first, declining even to give Berkland his name. But when Berkland told him what the attorney said — that the subject would get $200,000 if he passed — the man grew more compliant, Berkland said Tuesday on cross-examination from an attorney representing co-defendant Milton Brown.
Berkland had said Monday on direct examination that at one point the test subject pulled a VHS tape out of his pants and left it on the table while he used the restroom. The person who hired him had also arranged for the same test subject to undergo a polygraph, Berkland said Monday.
Tuesday morning, polygraph administrator John Hurlock testified remotely from Missouri that he also was hired in August 2001 to test someone about whether they had any other copies of a certain tape. The test subject also declined to give Hurlock his name or signature.
“He gave me a moniker, he told me to just call him ‘Showtime,’” Hurlock said. “So that’s what I wrote on the form.”
Hurlock also never got any information about what was on the tape in question, Hurlock said. He was directed to refer to it only as the “performance tape,” he said.
Hurlock does not recall actually giving the subject a polygraph test, he said. If the man refused to sign his form, Hurlock probably wouldn’t have tested him, he said.
“Seems to me like he just got upset over the whole process and wanted to stop,” he said.
Defense attorneys objected to the speculation, and Hurlock acknowledged that, yes, he was speculating.
“It was just so long ago,” he said.
Kelly and co-defendants Brown and Derrel McDavid are accused of participating in an extensive scheme to cover up Kelly’s misdeeds.
The centerpiece witness Monday was a mother whose young daughter was allegedly sexually assaulted by R. Kelly on videotape in the 1990s. She testified that Kelly threatened them and sent them out of town after the allegations of abuse first surfaced more than 20 years ago.
The woman, who is being referred to under the pseudonym “Susan,” echoed some of the explosive claims her daughter “Jane” gave made in court last week, a watershed moment in the R. Kelly saga after years of denying any sexual misconduct by the R&B superstar. But Susan’s testimony, unlike Jane’s, was disjointed and confusing at times, and she contradicted her daughter on a few key points.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Some of the counts carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years behind bars if convicted, while others have ranges of five to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors are also seeking a personal money forfeiture of $1.5 million from Kelly.
The trial is expected to last at least through mid-September, and jurors are likely to hear from more women who say Kelly had sexual contact with them when they were minors. Prosecutors also allege Kelly and his team took extensive measures to conceal Kelly’s misdeeds, ultimately leading to his acquittal on state child-pornography charges in 2008.
Jurors on Friday watched graphic clips of three separate videos allegedly showing the R&B superstar sexually assaulting 14-year-old Jane.
Jane testified last week that she was the girl seen on the videos and that Kelly had sex with her “innumerable times” when she was underage, then paid her and her family to keep quiet.
Kelly’s defense so far has not directly contested that it is Kelly on the video clips, only saying that their authenticity could not be verified and that Kelly was previously acquitted for conduct related to them. Nor has the defense given jurors an alternate version of Jane’s narrative of events related to videos. Instead, the defense lawyers are seeking to sow doubt by telling the panel Jane denied it was her on the clips for more than two decades.
Regardless of the outcome, Kelly is still facing decades in prison. In June, he was sentenced to 30 years on federal racketeering charges brought in New York. He is appealing both the jury’s verdict and the sentence in that case.
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