R.Kelly’s child pornography and trial-fixing case gets Jury

At R. Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago on Tuesday Jurors began deliberating, on charges accusing the singer of producing child pornography sorting through a month of evidence and arguments, enticing minors for rigging his 2008 child porn trial and sex.

Jennifer Bonjean, Kelly attorney, told jurors in her closing earlier Tuesday standing at a podium a few feet in front of jurors, that key government witnesses were admitted liars  to ensure they couldn’t be charged who testified with immunity.

To a cockroach and the government’s case to a bowl of soup Bonjean likened their testimony and other evidence, at times sounding indignant and raising her voice.

She said if a cockroach falls into soup, “you don’t just pull out the cockroach and eat the rest of the soup. The whole soup you throw out,” said the jurors. Of the prosecution’s case “There are just too many cockroaches”. 

As Bonjean spoke, Kelly looked calm at a nearby defense table Kelly, wearing a gray suit and black mask. He often averted his eyes, as a prosecutor spoke later and repeatedly looked toward Kelly. He shook his head, later, when the prosecutor described him abusing minors.

Early Tuesday afternoon Jurors withdrew to start deliberating, heading home without reaching a verdict several hours later. Where they left off Wednesday morning they were set to pick up.

Kelly, 55, was sentenced in June to 30 years in prison where he was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking during a separate federal trial in New York. Kelly’s current trial could add years to his imprisonment convictions on just a few of the 13 counts.

After Bonjean’s closing delivering the government’s rebuttal, to remember the girls and women Kelly allegedly abused prosecutor Jeannice Appenteng told jurors.

In the mid-1990s the prosecutor also pointed to testimony that as Kelly’s fame boomed, they did to what Kelly wanted his staff and associates increasingly geared everything.

To withdraw to the jury room Bonjean implored jurors with an impression of Kelly informed by media coverage of him, at the trial earlier in recent years or by prosecutors.

She said about prosecutors that “They throw around labels like sex predator”. “These man labels and sweeping generalizations are distractions to lose your humanity meant for you.”

To navigate his celebrity and fortune since childhood she described Kelly as a flawed genius who was functionally illiterate and was ill-equipped. She said having been abused also deeply affected him as a child.

To the courthouse in Chicago, Kelly’s hometown, to tell the unvarnished truth Bonjean said some witnesses who testified with immunity hadn’t come.

She said that “They came in here to tell the government’s version of the truth”.

During her closing Monday, Prosecutor Elizabeth Pozolo, told jurors that weeks of evidence proved the singer parlayed his fame to sexually abuse minors and record the abuse on video. Kelly she described as a secret sexual predator.

On Monday for a mistrial Bonjean twice called by complaining that closing arguments by attorneys for Kelly co-defendants Derrell McDavid and Milton Brown were grounded in the presumption that “the world now knows Mr. Kelly is a sex predator.”

She said “For him the presumption of innocence has been abolished”. The requests were denied by Judge Harry Leinenweber.

On state child porn charges by intimidating and paying off witnesses the singer’s former business manager, Kelly and McDavid, are accused of fixing Kelly’s 2008 trial.

Including four counts of producing child porn, Kelly faces 13 counts, to obstruct justice one count of conspiring by rigging the 2008 trial, one count of conspiring to receive child porn, five counts of enticing minors for sex and two counts of actually receiving it.

With four counts McDavid is charged, including two counts of receiving child porn, one of conspiring to do so and one count of conspiring to obstruct justice by rigging the 2008 trial.

An accuser who went by “Jane” and who said Kelly sexually abused her hundreds of times starting when she was 14, on the government’s star witness Pozolo focused much of her closing argument.

Pozolo said that “He performed degrading acts upon her for his own sick pleasure”.  

At around age 30, she reminded jurors of graphic video footage they had watched, which Jane testified depicted Kelly abusing her when she was 14. The videos shown included one at the heart of Kelly’s 2008 trial. Later Jurors said that they had no choice but to acquit Kelly because Jane didn’t testify.

“To film a video like this, who uses a 14-year-old child?” she said. “This man. Robert Kelly.”

Pozolo said, Kelly and his associates scrambled to recover multiple sex videos that had gone missing from a collection he often carried around in a large gym bag, before the 2008 trial.

She said, by doing so, Kelly associates sought “to cover up the fact that … R. Kelly, the R&B superstar, is actually a sexual predator.”

For McDavid an attorney said prosecutors had to show that his client actually knew about any abuse of Jane by Kelly in the 2000s — in his closing, not just that it was likely he knew.

They did not. “Did they prove he knew, behind a reasonable doubt?”, asked by Beau Brindley.

After helping to recover missing recordings and handing bags of cash to people who returned videos McDavid knew could destroy Kelly, Pozolo balked at the idea that in the 2000s McDavid had no inkling that the abuse allegations might be credible.

Source:- https://blogspacecap.com/r-kellys-child-pornography-and-trial-fixing-case-gets-jury/

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Created on Sep 16th 2022 03:47. Viewed 122 times.

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