The singer is charged with fixing his 2008 state little one pornography trial by threatening witnesses and concealing video proof.
CHICAGO — R. Kelly is a sexual predator who parlayed his fame to abuse minors, a prosecutor stated Monday throughout closing arguments on the R&B star’s little one pornography and trial-fixing trial.
Addressing jurors in a twenty fifth flooring courtroom in Chicago, Kelly’s hometown, Elizabeth Pozol cited one among Kelly’s accusers who was the federal government’s begin witness on the monthlong trial.
Referring to the accuser by a pseudonym, “Jane,” Pozol stated Kelly “took benefit of Jane’s youth. He repeatedly abused her. He carried out degrading acts upon her for his personal sick pleasure.”
She stated Kelly and his two co-defendants helped to get better little one pornography movies and hid proof earlier than Kelly’s 2008 path, at which he was acquitted.
She stated they acted to cowl up the truth that “R. Kelly … the R&B celebrity … is definitely a sexual predator.”
Minutes earlier than the protection rested late Friday, Kelly co-defendant and ex-business supervisor Derrell McDavid ended three days on the stand. He testified for almost two days that he had believed Kelly when he denied abusing minors — then stated he began having doubts about Kelly’s believability throughout the trial that began final month.
Kelly and McDavid are charged with fixing Kelly’s 2008 state little one pornography trial — at which Kelly was acquitted — by threatening witnesses and concealing video proof. Each additionally face little one pornography prices. One other co-defendant, Kelly affiliate Milton Brown, is accused of receiving little one pornography.
Prosecutors usually get an opportunity to name witnesses in a rebuttal of the protection case. However once they informed Choose Harry Leinenweber that they wanted time to organize, he stated there could be no rebuttal and the case would go straight to closing arguments Monday morning.
McDavid was the one one of many three defendants to testify on his personal behalf.
Kelly, 55, already was sentenced to 30 years in jail in June after a separate federal trial in New York.
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Identified for his smash hit “I Imagine I Can Fly” and for sex-infused songs corresponding to “Bump n’ Grind,” Kelly offered hundreds of thousands of albums even after allegations of sexual misconduct started circulating within the Nineteen Nineties. Widespread outrage emerged after the #MeToo reckoning and the 2019 docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly.”
Throughout Kelly’s monthlong trial in 2008, state prosecutors performed a 30-minute, sexually specific video dozens of occasions on giant screens all through the courtroom. Prosecutors stated it confirmed Kelly abusing Jane — then 14 years previous.
The continued trial is in some methods a do-over of the 2008 trial. The video was on the coronary heart of that trial and can be in proof on the present trial.
Jane, then an grownup, didn’t testify at that 2008 trial, which jurors cited as a cause they could not convict Kelly. She testified on the present trial that she was the particular person in that video. She additionally stated Kelly sexually abused her a whole lot of occasions beginning when she was 14.
