CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors have rested their case-in-chief against R. Kelly, after calling some two dozen witnesses against the disgraced R&B singer and his two co-defendants.
Their announcement came around 12:40 p.m. Central time Tuesday, during the third week of trial. Judge Harry Leinenweber adjourned the proceedings until Thursday morning, when defense attorneys can begin calling their witnesses.
In a surprising move, prosecutors closed after calling only four of the five Kelly accusers who they said jurors would hear from during the trial.
The fourth woman took the stand Tuesday morning.
“Nia” was 15 when she approached Kelly for an autograph at a mall in Atlanta, she testified. Kelly gave her his signature — and also wrote his phone number on the paper, she said.
They began to have phone conversations, and during one, she told him she was 15, she said. He said he wanted her to come see one of his shows, and arranged for her to travel to Minnesota for a concert, she testified.
A limousine picked her up at her mother’s apartment in Atlanta — and on the way to the airport they stopped at a gas station so she could pick up a single rose to give to Kelly.
“I wanted him to know how I felt about him. And I felt that it would be a gesture that would be sweet, that he would like,” she said.
She went to the concert in Minnesota, and Kelly came to her hotel room the next day, she said.
Kelly hugged her and kissed her on the lips in greeting, she said. She asked if they could take a photo together, but Kelly declined.
Kelly instructed Nia to take off her clothes, walk around, and then sit next to him on the bed, she testified.
She complied, and Kelly kissed her, asked her if she was a virgin, and began to perform a sex act on himself, she testified.
When he was finished, he left the room in a hurry, she testified.
“He cleaned himself off and he left,” she said. “... I never got a chance to give him a rose.”
Nia sat very still as she testified, keeping her gaze on the prosecutor asking her questions. Her testimony began quietly and nervously — she had to be asked to move closer to the microphone — but she seemed to grow more comfortable as the questioning continued.
Since Kelly had mentioned wanting to see her in Chicago, Nia made arrangements to stay with family there after school let out in the summer of 1996, she testified.
One night she went with three cousins to visit him at his studio, she said.
Kelly greeted them, but expressed surprise that she didn’t come alone, she testified. Over the course of the night he summoned her away twice so they could kiss alone in the hallway. During one of those instances he groped her under her pants, she testified.
Nia did not tell her cousins about any of that, she testified: “Their reason for coming was to prevent anything from happening, and I didn’t want them to know.”
Later that summer she tried contacting him several times and he never got back to her, she testified.
They ran into each other again some time later in California, during a video shoot for Kelly’s “If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time,” Nia testified. She was an aspiring actor and model at the time, she said.
“He never acknowledged me or spoke to me, but sometimes I felt he would look in my direction and might have recognized me,” she said.
In 2002, Nia filed a lawsuit against Kelly with the allegations of underage sexual contact, and Kelly agreed to pay $500,000, she testified.
Nia had been very composed through much of the direct, but her expression grew pained when she was asked about the lawsuit. And as Kelly’s defense attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, raised a series of objections to the questions about the settlement, Nia reached for tissue and began dabbing tears from her eyes.
On cross-examination, Bonjean was skeptical that Nia could have boarded a flight without identification, as she testified, and pressed her on whether she actually told Kelly her age. Nia remained adamant that she informed Kelly she was 15 before he asked her to come see him on tour.
“If you told him you were 15, you must have also discussed the fact your mother wouldn’t condone or consent you leaving the state of Georgia, getting on a plane by yourself, and going to see a grown man, right?”
Prosecutors objected, and the judge sustained the objection.
Nia’s mother was a nurse and had already left for work by the time the white limousine came to pick Nia up for her trip to Minnesota, she said.
Bonjean asserted that Nia filed her lawsuit “not long” after Kelly snubbed her at the music video shoot, and after she heard Kelly was in trouble on child pornography charges.
Nia testified she contacted the attorney to see if she could be helpful as a witness against Kelly — a claim of which Bonjean was audibly skeptical.
“You contacted a private attorney ... because you might be helpful in the criminal prosecution?” she asked. “You didn’t contact the Cook County State’s Attorney and let them know?”
Prosecutors briefly called to the stand Sheryl Ware, who identified herself as the ex-wife of Nia’s cousin. She was among the group of cousins who came along to Kelly’s studio when Nia was 15, she said.
Ware noted that she recognized Kelly because he was wearing the same shirt he was wearing in the music video for “Gotham City,” she said, and they were at the studio that night until the early morning.
As they were leaving, Kelly said “let me talk to (Nia) for a minute,” Ware testifies.
“I was like ‘you get five minutes.’ So they went out in the hallway,” she said. “They were out there exactly five minutes, ‘cause I came out in five minutes.”
The trial could finish next week, given a few days for defense witnesses to testify on behalf of Kelly and his co-defendants.
Other testimony Tuesday morning came from a childhood friend of a woman who said R. Kelly sexually assaulted her when she was underage.
Federal prosecutors called Kelly Adams to the stand late Monday to corroborate the claims of her friend Tracy, who testified Monday using only her first name. There was extensive discussion during cross-examination Monday about what year Tracy met the singer. Tracy testified it was in 1999, when she was 16; however, Bonjean asserted strenuously that it could only have happened a year later, when Tracy was 17 — the legal age of consent.
On cross-examination Tuesday from Bonjean, Adams was insistent that she and Tracy met Kelly when Tracy was 16. But in a signed statement as part of Tracy’s 2001 lawsuit, Adams said that they met Kelly in 2000, when Tracy would have been 17.
“You think your memory is better in August of 2022 than it was when you signed your statement of August of ‘01?” Bonjean asked.
“In August of 2001, I don’t know what that is, but I know for sure it wasn’t 2000 when we met him,” she replied.
Some of her prior statements to law enforcement also said Tracy might have been older than 16, Bonjean noted. Adams said those were merely estimates.
Tracy on Monday told jurors in extensive detail about Kelly’s sexual abuse and assault of her when she was 16. Another Kelly accuser also testified Monday under the pseudonym “Pauline,” saying she had sexual contact with the disgraced singer dozens if not hundreds of times when she was underage.
Both women came under intense cross-examination from Bonjean, who asserted that both women had actually reached 17 — Illinois’ age of consent — when they began their sexual relationships with Kelly.
Kelly’s trial now in its third week at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, which has so far featured nearly two dozen witnesses.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Also on trial are former Kelly associates Derrel McDavid and Milton “June” Brown, who, according to the indictment, schemed to buy back incriminating sex tapes that had been taken from Kelly’s collection and hide years of alleged sexual abuse of underage girls.
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.
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