The singer was indicted in his hometown of Chicago on 13 counts – including creating images of child abuse, luring minors for sex and tampering with his 2008 child sexual abuse trial. Kelly and Derrel McDavid, the singer’s former business manager, were accused of rigging Kelly’s 2008 trial on state child pornography charges by intimidating and paying off witnesses. The singer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was found guilty of luring underage girls to have sex with him, but not guilty of obstruction of justice charges. The jury began deliberations Tuesday after hearing weeks of testimony and watching portions of an explicit video that one of Kelly’s accusers, Jane, said depicts her at age 14 with the R&B singer. Kelly, who is known for his smash hit I Believe I Can Fly and sex-themed songs like Bump N’ Grind, sold millions of albums even as abuse allegations began to surface in the 1990s. Widespread outrage followed the #MeToo account and the 2019 documentary series Surviving R. Kelly. Kelly, 55, has already been convicted in New York of extortion and sex trafficking and was sentenced in June to 30 years in federal prison. On that alone, he won’t be eligible for parole until he’s about 80 — but these new convictions could add years to his sentence. The Chicago trial was in many ways a rerun of the 2008 trial, with a key video crucial to both. Two more tests are pending. one in Minnesota and another in state court in Chicago. Read more: Everyone knew the charges – so why did it take 30 years for justice to be served? Image: R Kelly arrives at his previous trial in 2019 “Cockroaches in a bowl of soup” On Tuesday, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean told the court that key government witnesses were admitted as liars who testified with immunity to ensure they could not be indicted. At times sounding exasperated and raising her voice, Ms. Bonjean likened their testimony and other evidence to a cockroach and the government’s case to a bowl of soup. If a cockroach falls into soup, he said, “You don’t just take out the cockroach and eat the rest of the soup. You throw away the whole soup.” He said of the prosecution’s case: “There are too many cockroaches.”
