Michael Jackson got off. O.J. got off; and now R. Kelly has acquitted of 14 counts of child pornography. Is there anyone out there who is are really surprised at this outcome? I told myself I wouldn't post anything news regarding Chester's molestation trial until a verdict was reached. However, I didn't think it would come so soon...I also didn't think the jury would find him not guilty; especially when there was proof-positive evidence (that the jury viewed with their own eyes)of the singer incriminating himself on tape. And now six years after being charged with making and starring in a child porn video, R&B superstar R. Kelly was found not guilty today by a Cook County jury and walked away a free man. Jurors deliberated for about three hours Thursday and part of today before reaching their verdict. The jury cleared him on all 14 counts filed against him. As the first "not guilty" was read, Kelly dipped his head and kept it bowed during the entire reading of the 14-count verdict. When the reading was completed, he took a baby blue handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the tears streaming down his face. He then bear-hugged his defense attorneys. Kelly, who did not testify during his trial, faced up to 15 years in an Illinois prison. After the verdict, one of his attorneys, Sam Adam Jr., described his client as deeply religious. “When they read the verdict you got to see the real Robert Kelly,” Adam Jr. said. “He sat there and he was crying. He was thanking God. He was saying ‘Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus’ after each count. He is not the man there doing those things to that woman.” Asked who was on the tape if it wasn’t Kelly, Adam Jr. said: “If you find that out, let us know.”
When word of the verdict spread through the courthouse at 26th and California, some Cook County deputies as well as lawyers walking through the building's first floor hallways cheered. Outside the courthouse, a huge roar came up from about 75 waiting Kelly supporters. "I love him!" one woman shouted as Kelly left the building moments after the verdict was read. "I love him! Get that on camera!" Kelly did not comment to reporters but a Kelly spokesman said the singer wanted to thank his fans "who stuck by him and supported him with such love. And most of all, he wants to thank God for giving him the strength to get through this." Of course. Outside the courthouse, Chicago's Leshi Agee, 25, shouted, "We love you!'' to Kelly as the singer left in a black SUV. "He looks so good,'' said Agee. "Bye, baby.'' Agee, who came with her three children between the ages of 10 months and five years, said, "I knew he ain't done it because he ain't that type of person. They was hating on him. He proved everybody wrong.''
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Fourteen-year-old Kewan Mackey said, "I knew he ain't do it. I knew he was going to win. Money makes the world go around.'' Nicole Jones, 16, came down to the courthouse with 15-year-old sister Neshay Jones to support Kelly. They said they have avidly followed the case. "I think this whole situation was about money," Nicole said. "I think he's innocent."
The case centered on a 27-minute videotape anonymously sent to Chicago Sun-Times pop music critic Jim DeRogatis in 2002. Prosecutors said Kelly videotaped himself having sex with -- and urinating upon -- his underage goddaughter. In closing arguments, the state said more than a dozen witnesses identified the alleged victim as being on the tape. Prosecutors also said there was no doubt that Kelly is the man on the tape and that the video was made in his Lake View basement some time between 1998 and 2000. Defense attorneys keyed in on the fact that the victim, now an adult, has denied she's the one on the tape. They noted that Kelly's goddaughter is a "sweet, nice young lady," and certainly wouldn't have accepted cash for sex, as the girl in the tape is shown doing.
Of the 12 jurors, nine were men and three were women; eight were white and four were black. They included the wife of a Baptist preacher from Kelly's Chicago-area hometown, Olympia Fields, as well as a compliance officer for a Chicago investment firm and a man in his 60s who emigrated from then-Communist Romania nearly 40 years ago. Defense attorney Ed Genson praised the jurors as well as Judge Vincent Gaughan for their work during the trial -- and noted the length of the case. "I've gone from middle aged to senior citizen," Genson said. Jurors who spoke to the media at the Cook County courthouse at 26th and California after today’s verdict said that no juror caved just because they were tired of being sequestered and wanted to go home. “All of us wanted to go home, but we knew — like the judge said the first day — we had to do our duty,” said one female juror, who declined to be identified by name.
One juror who initially voted to convict R. Kelly said he was convinced the man seen on a sex tape, which prosecutors said was Kelly with his underage goddaughter, was indeed Kelly. But after discussions about the defense arguments that prosecutors had not proven the girl’s identity, the juror decided that prosecutors had not proven Kelly’s guilt in the child porn case beyond a reasonable doubt. Reporters told the jurors some details the jurors were not allowed to hear in court — that Kelly had married aspiring actress Aaliyah Haughton when she was 15 years old; that three girls had filed lawsuits against him claiming he lured them into sexual relationships when they were underage; and that other girls had threatened similar suits but settled out of court.
Asked by reporters if that evidence would have changed their minds, one male juror said “I would have had to work harder [to vote for acquittal].’’ Added a female juror, “If they had presented it, who knows what we would have done.’’ But jurors said they believed it was their task just to consider the case at hand: Was it R. Kelly and his goddaughter on the tape?
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