R. Kelly was acquitted of all charges on Friday 14 June after less than a day of deliberations in his child pornography trial, ending a six-year ordeal for the R&B superstar.
A visibly stunned Kelly, who was charged in 2002 in a case beset by delays, dabbed tears from his face with a handkerchief and hugged each of his four attorneys right after the verdict was read. The Grammy award-winning singer had faced 15 years in prison if convicted.
“All I heard (from Kelly) while those 14 verdicts were being read was ‘Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus,'” said Sam Adam Jr., one of his attorneys. During the 10 minutes it took to read the lengthy verdicts, Kelly kept his head down and eyes shut tight — barely moving and clutching the hands of his flanking attorneys.
Minutes later, surrounded by bodyguards, he left the courthouse without comment. Dozens of fans screamed and cheered as he climbed into a waiting SUV.
Prosecutors had argued that a videotape mailed to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002 showed Kelly engaged in graphic sex acts with a girl as young as 13 at the time. Both Kelly, 41, and the now 23-year-old alleged victim had denied they were the ones on the tape. Neither testified during the trial.
“Robert said all along that he believed in our system and he believed in God — and that when all the facts came out in court, he would be cleared of these terrible charges,” according to a statement from his publicist, Allen Mayer. “But he never dreamed it would take six and a half years. This has been a terrible ordeal for him and his family and at this point, all he wants to do is move forward and put it behind him.”
Jurors — who deliberated for three hours Thursday after closing arguments and for about four hours on Friday — said they remained sharply divided through Friday morning. A vote they took just a few hours before the acquittal had seven jurors voting not guilty and five voting guilty.
Members of the panel said the prosecution was weakened because neither the alleged victim nor her parents testified. But the real key was the woman herself: One juror said he just was not sure the female was who prosecutors said she was — or that she was a minor when the tape was made.
Another said that while he was convinced it was Kelly on the tape, he had doubts about the female. “What we had wasn’t enough,” said the juror, who declined to give his name.
Prosecutors relied in part on a star witness who said she engaged in three-way sex with Kelly and the girl. Defence attorneys claimed she sought hundreds of thousands of dollars from Kelly in exchange for her silence.
Over seven days, the state called 22 witnesses, including several childhood friends of the alleged victim and four of her relatives who identified her as the female on the video.
In just two days, Kelly’s lawyers called 12 witnesses. They included three relatives of the alleged victim who testified they did not recognize her as the female on the tape.
Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Shauna Boliker said she still believed the female on the tape was a victim, not a prostitute — as the defence had contended.
“This shows the world how difficult this crime is to prosecute,” she said. “It also takes the soul of the victim, the heart of the victim.”
Kelly won a Grammy in 1997 for “I Believe I Can Fly,” and is known for such raunchy hits as “Bump N’ Grind,” “Ignition,” and for “Trapped in the Closet,” a multipart saga about the sexual secrets of an ever-expanding cast of characters.
Despite his legal troubles, Kelly — who rose from poverty on Chicago’s South Side to become a star singer, songwriter and producer — still retains a huge following, and his popularity has arguably grown in recent years.
The singer has released more than half a dozen albums, most of them selling over a million copies. His new song, “Hair Braider,” is out now, and he’s due to release a new album in July.
Kelly, always meticulously dressed in a suit and tie, appeared tense at times during the trial, furrowing his brow. He seemed particularly ill at ease when prosecutors played the sex tape in open court after opening arguments.
In the video, entered into evidence as “People’s Exhibit No. 1,” a man has sex with a young female, who is naked for most of the recording. She is often blank-faced. The man speaks to her in a hushed voice, and she calls him “Daddy.”
In one scene, alluded to in one count of the indictment, the man urinates on the female.
The issue of whether there was or wasn’t a fingernail-sized mole on the man’s lower back was a subject of hours of testimony. A defence witness told jurors there was no mole on his back, proving it’s not Kelly, who has such a mole. But a prosecution witness displayed freeze frames of the video where a dark spot seemed to appear as the man turns to take off his pants.
Jurors later said the issue of whether Kelly had a mole was not a decisive factor.
Cross examination was often heated. Several witnesses cried on the stand.
The star prosecution witness, Lisa Van Allen, became teary-eyed as she told jurors she engaged in several three-way sexual encounters with Kelly and the alleged victim, including once on a basketball court. Kelly videotaped the trysts, she said and used to carry a duffel bag stuffed full of his homemade sex tapes.
The defence called several witnesses in a bid to discredit Van Allen, accusing her of trying to extort money from Kelly. Under cross-examination, Van Allen admitted she once stole Kelly’s $20,000 diamond-studded watch from a hotel.
The sex tape was played in its entirety after opening arguments and during closing arguments on Thursday. But jurors — nine men and three women — said they didn’t watch the whole video again in deliberations.
“I’ve seen that videotape way too many times,” one juror, a woman in her 20s, told reporters Friday. “The first time was one too many.”
