Disgraced singer R Kelly, 55, demands a new trial and acquittal after being found guilty of child sex abuse in Chicago court
Jennifer Bonjean, Kelly’s attorney, filed the motions on Tuesday with arguments which will likely be heard at an appeal to the 7th Circuit US Court of Appeals, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Last month in Chicago, a federal jury found Kelly guilty on three counts of child pornography, but he was acquitted of a conspiracy to obstruct justice charge accusing him and his team of fixing his state child pornography trial in 2008.
Bonjean has asked for an acquittal on all counts based on several technical factors.
She said that the prosecution has not been able to prove that the infamous videotape of Kelly abusing his goddaughter who went by the pseudonym ‘Jane’ was made for the purpose of child pornography.
Kelly’s attorney also argued that there had been insufficient evidence that the tape had ever crossed state lines – an element that prosecutors were required to prove during the Chicago trial.
R. Kelly, 55, has filed two motions seeking a new trial or an outright reversal of his conviction on child pornography and other sex-abuse related charges
Flanked by attorneys, Derrel McDavid, center, walks into the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago. McDavid is accused of helping Kelly fix the 2008 trial
The second motion has asked for a new trial based on alleged misstatements by the government’s first witness at trial Dr Darrel Turner.
Turner testified during the trial as an expert on how sexual predators ‘groom’ underage victims and told the jury that he billed prosecutors $250 per hour for his work on this case when the actual figure was $450.
Turner also allegedly underrepresented how many hours he was paid for, telling the jury it was two hours when it was six and a half, Bojean said.
The misstatements were allegedly known to the prosecutors who failed to correct them for the jury, she continued.
‘Had the jurors known that Turner actively misled them, the jurors would likely have rejected his testimony outright,’ Bonjean said.
Prosecutors are expected to file responses to Bonjean’s allegations later this month.
Kelly was convicted of pornography charges for making three videotapes of himself abusing Jane beginning in the 1990s.
The charges Kelly was convicted of carry a minimum of 10 years in prison.
The conviction on those counts comes 14 years after Kelly’s infamous acquittal on similar charges in Cook County, which were based on a single video of Kelly allegedly abusing Jane in the hot tub room of his former home on West George Street. Jane had refused to cooperate in that case.
Kelly was also found guilty on three out of five counts related to enticement of a minor involving Jane and two other victims who came forward to testify against him.
The jury did however acquit Kelly and two co-defendants on charges to conspire to retrieve incriminating tapes and rig the 2008 trial by pressuring Jane to lie to investigators about their relationship and refuse to testify against him.
The jury of seven women and five men also acquitted Kelly and his two former associates, Derrel McDavid and Milton ‘June’ Brown, of conspiring to receive the footage that was shown in court.
Jurors apparently determined that while the videos they saw were authentic, they could not say beyond a reasonable doubt that Kelly’s team schemed to get them back or even knowingly obtained them.
Kelly was also found not guilty of filming himself with Jane on a video that jurors never saw.
The prosecution said the video was not played in court because Kelly’s team successfully buried it but defense attorneys questioned whether the video ever existed.
The long-awaited verdict came after five weeks of trial featuring some 34 witnesses.
The jury deliberated for about 11 hours over two days before the decision was announced in the large ceremonial courtroom at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
Kelly and McDavid, 61, were acquitted on charges they conspired to obstruct justice in Kelly’s 2002 Cook County case. The two men also were acquitted on charges they received child pornography.
All three defendants including Brown, 56, were acquitted on charges of conspiring to receive child pornography.
Kelly, who has been in custody since his July 2019 arrest in Chicago, was led away to the lockup by deputy U.S. marshals. A sentencing date was not immediately set.
The Chicago trial came just two weeks after he was sentenced in New York for racketeering and sex trafficking.
Kelly was first held at the correctional after he was indicted on federal charges in Chicago and New York in 2019.
Kelly was convicted in 2021 in New York on charges that he sexually abused young fans, including children, in a systematic scheme that prosecutors alleged went on for decades.
On June 29, Judge Ann M. Donnelly handed down Kelly’s 30-year sentence in Brooklyn Federal Court. Kelly had appealed the jury’s verdict and the judge’s sentence
Attorneys for Kelly claimed he was placed on suicide watch as a form of punishment by the US Attorney’s Office, but prosecutors pushed back, arguing Kelly’s ‘life circumstances undoubtedly [brought] emotional distress.’
Kelly’s sentence in New York also included a $100,000 fine.
During the sentencing, the judge said Kelly created ‘a trail of broken lives,’ adding that ‘the most seasoned investigators will not forget the horrors your victims endured.
‘These crimes were calculated and carefully planned and regularly executed for almost 25 years,’ she said. ‘You taught them that love is enslavement and violence.’
The sentence caps a slow-motion fall for Kelly, who was adored by legions of fans and sold millions of albums even after allegations about his abuse of young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s.
Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t come until the #MeToo reckoning, reaching a crescendo after the release of the docuseries ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’
Kelly’s lawyers argued he should get no more than 10 years in prison because he had a traumatic childhood ‘involving severe, prolonged childhood sexual abuse, poverty, and violence.’
Allegations that Kelly abused young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s. He was sued in 1997 by a woman who alleged sexual battery and sexual harassment while she was a minor.
Evidence was also presented about a fraudulent marriage scheme hatched to protect Kelly after he feared he had impregnated R&B phenom Aaliyah in 1994 when she was just 15.
Witnesses said they were married in matching jogging suits using a license falsely listing her age as 18, he was 27 at the time.
Aaliyah worked with Kelly, who wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number.’ She died in a plane crash in 2001 at age 22.
The abuse continued for years while Kelly continued to sell millions of albums.
After Kelly’s former business manager, Derrell McDavid, claimed prosecutors should be on the hook for his $850,000 legal fees following his acquittal, a trove of documents of the singer’s Chicago case were released to the public.
Among the most interesting involved the jury’s questions over Kelly’s 1994 marriage to the late Aaliyah, who was 15 and whose abuse was not part of the Chicago trial but did show up in his New York case.
It remains unclear why the Chicago jurors were shown the evidence regarding Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001, in the first place when prosecutors decided not to charge Kelly with crimes regarding her.
The marriage was annulled in 1995 by Aaliyah’s parents, who did not know about the wedding before it occurred. She tragically died in a plane crash six years later at the age of 22.
The Mann Act is a federal law that makes it illegal to traffic people across state lines for prostitution or illegal sexual activity.
The legal challenges for Kelly – who rose from poverty on Chicago’s South Side to become a Grammy-winning superstar – are not yet over.
Two further trials are pending; one in Minnesota and another in state court in Chicago.
(Daily Mail)
