R. Kelly Won’t Testify in Chicago Trial – Billboard

R. Kelly’s legal professionals started mounting a protection Thursday in Chicago in opposition to federal prices of kid pornography, enticement of minors for intercourse and fixing his 2008 state trial, with an preliminary witness contending the singer was himself a sufferer of blackmail.

The presentation to jurors gained’t embrace Kelly taking the witness stand.

Choose Harry Leinenweber requested Kelly straight on Thursday morning if he would testify, and the Grammy Award winner responded that he wouldn’t.

The decide raised the difficulty minutes earlier than attorneys for Kelly and two co-defendants started calling their first witnesses, endeavoring to counter two weeks of presidency testimony — together with from 4 girls who accused Kelly of sexual abuse.

Co-defendant Derrel McDavid, a longtime Kelly enterprise supervisor, is accused of serving to Kelly rig the 2008 trial, at which Kelly was acquitted. McDavid stated he’ll testify. Co-defendant Milton Brown is charged with receiving youngster pornography. Like Kelly, he stated he wouldn’t testify.

Testifying would have been dangerous. At occasions, Kelly has exploded in anger below robust questioning, which may harm his protection.

He misplaced his cool in a 2019 interview with Gayle King on “CBS This Morning.” As she pressed him about accusations of sexual abuse, he jumped up, crying and gesticulating. “I didn’t do that stuff!” he shouted. “This isn’t me! I’m preventing for my … life!”

Legal professionals for all three defendants are primarily sharing witnesses. McDavid’s authorized workforce referred to as the primary protection witness, McDavid pal and former police officer Christopher G. Wilson. He testified that McDavid instructed him in 2001 {that a} merchandizing agent for Kelly, Charles Freeman, was making an attempt to blackmail the R&B star.

Freeman testified earlier for the federal government that Kelly and his associates agreed to pay him $1 million to seek out and return a video that featured Kelly, describing how he was handed luggage full of money as cost. He stated the cash was for providers rendered, not an extortion bid. Prosecutors say the funds have been a part of a conspiracy to hinder investigators main as much as Kelly’s 2008 trial.

Underneath cross-examination, Wilson conceded he didn’t straight witness anybody making an attempt to extort Kelly, saying he was counting on what McDavid instructed him.

A conviction on only one or two of the costs on the Chicago trial may add years to a 30-year sentence Kelly already acquired from a New York federal decide in June for convictions on racketeering and intercourse trafficking prices.

Through witnesses Thursday, the protection additionally sought to boost doubts concerning the ages of some accusers, saying no less than one could have been 17, the age of consent in Illinois, on the time Kelly pursued her for intercourse.

There was nothing essentially sinister about Kelly or his staff dealing in money, one other protection witness, former Kelly studio intern Tom Arnold, instructed jurors. Kelly hardly ever used his personal bank cards and most popular money transactions, added Arnold, who stated he as soon as carried $125,000 to Kelly in a backpack.

The spotlight of prosecutors’ presentation was the testimony two weeks in the past of a 37-year-old lady who used the pseudonym “Jane.” She described Kelly sexually abusing her tons of of occasions beginning in 1998 when she was 14 and Kelly was round 30.

Closing arguments are anticipated to occur in the course of subsequent week.