Closing arguments heard at R Kelly trial

Prosecutors said in the final arguments of the R&B star’s child pornography and trial-fixing trial that R Kelly was a sex offender who used his reputation to abuse minors.

Addressing jurors on the 25th floor of the courtroom in Kelly’s hometown of Chicago, Elizabeth Pozzolo cited one of Kelly’s accusers who was the government’s star witness in the month-long trial.

Referring to the accuser under the pseudonym “Jane,” Ms. Pozzolo said Kelly “took advantage of Jane’s youth. He abused her many times. He acted degradingly on her because of his illness.”

Kelly and his two co-defendants helped recover the child pornography videos and hid evidence before Kelly was acquitted in 2008, she said.

They acted to hide the fact that “R Kelly…the R&B superstar…is actually a sexual predator,” she said.

He testified over nearly two days that he believed Kelly when he denied abusing minors — then said he began to doubt Kelly’s credibility during the trial that began last month.

Kelly and McDavid are accused of fixing Kelly’s 2008 state child pornography trial by threatening witnesses and withholding video evidence — Kelly was acquitted.

The pair also face child pornography charges. Another co-defendant, Kelly’s partner, Milton Brown, was charged with receiving child pornography.

Prosecutors usually have the opportunity to call witnesses to rebut defense cases. But when they told Judge Harry Leinenweber they needed time to prepare, he said there would be no rebuttal and the case would go straight to closing arguments on Monday morning.

McDavid was the only one of the three defendants to testify on his own behalf.

Kelly, 55, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after a separate federal trial in New York in June.

Even after allegations of sexual misconduct began circulating in the 1990s, Kelly sold millions of albums. There has been widespread outrage following the #MeToo reckoning and the 2019 documentary Surviving R Kelly.

During Kelly’s month-long trial in 2008, state prosecutors played dozens of 30-minute sexually explicit videos on big screens throughout the courtroom. Prosecutors said it showed Kelly abusing Jane, who was 14 at the time.

The video is at the heart of that trial and the evidence for the current trial.

Jane, who was an adult at the time, did not testify at the 2008 trial, which jurors believed was the reason they could not convict Kelly.

She testified at the current trial that she was the one in that video. She also said Kelly sexually abused her hundreds of times since she was 14.