R. Kelly was acquitted of all charges Friday following just hours of deliberations in his child pornography trial, ending a six-year ordeal for the R&B singer.
Kelly was seen wiping his face with a handkerchief then he hugged each of his four attorneys after the verdict of not guilty on all 14 counts - was read. The Grammy award-winning singer had potentially faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Following his aquittall Kelly, surrounded by bodyguards, he left the courthouse refusing to comment as fans screamed and cheered, he sped away in a waiting SUV.
Kelly’s attorney Sam Adam jr told the assembled press that during the reading of the not guilty verdicts his client kept repeating ‘Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus,”.
Prosecutors had argued that a video tape 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, but both Kelly, 41, and the now 23-year-old alleged victim had denied they were the ones on the tape. Neither were called to testify during the trial.
The prosecution’s main witness was a woman who said she engaged in three-way sex with Kelly and the alleged victim, the defence discredited this by showing that the man on the tape didn’t have a large mole on his back, Kelly has such a mole.
The procecusions case depended on whether Kelly was the man who appears on a sexually graphic, 27-minute videotape at the centre of the case, and whether a female who also appears on it was underage.
The prosecutions case lasted seven days during which they 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.
While in contrast the defence took just two days, calling 12 witnesses including 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 believed the female on the tape was a victim, not a prostitute as the defence had contended.
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.
The jury was made up of nine men and three women; of which eight were white and four were black and included the wife of a Baptist preacher from Kelly’s Chicago-area hometown, a compliance officer for a Chicago investment firm and a man who emigrated from then-Communist Romania nearly 40 years ago.
Source
Well thank God for that mole!
