One of the jurors in the federal criminal trial against R. Kelly and two former associates reported she was having a panic attack in the middle of closing arguments Monday and has been excused from the panel.
R. Kelly is seen in a courtroom sketch during his federal trial on Aug. 19, 2022, at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
Meanwhile, the attorney for Kelly’s co-defendant, Derrel McDavid, told jurors in his closing argument that the prosecution was riddled with reasonable doubt and based on untrustworthy witnesses, and that McDavid had no way of knowing whether Kelly was really sexually abusing minors.
“That child, who had no prior sexual experiences in her life, was forced to lay on that floor while that man sitting right over there urinated on her. That degrading act is forever captured on that video,” she said. “That abuse is forever memorialized.” Near the end of her roughly two-hour argument, Pozolo displayed photos of Jane, and two of the other alleged victims, Pauline, and Brittany, from their young teens on large monitors in the courtroom.
“No, they didn’t call an upstanding citizen to get those tapes back, they didn’t go to someone who’s liable to go to police,” Pozolo said. “No, they went to Charles Freeman ... they knew Freeman would do this job for money and he would do it while keeping his mouth shut.”And while defense attorneys on cross-examination seized on inconsistencies in testimony from Lisa Van Allen, the “core” of her testimony has remained the same for years, Pozolo said.
The tape purportedly showing Van Allen, Kelly and Jane has not been shown to jurors. The defense has said that’s because it does not exist, and that Kelly’s team in fact was paying to retrieve a sex tape showing Kelly’s wife. Prosecutors, however, allege that it did show child pornography, but Kelly’s team successfully covered it up.
And when prosecution witness Keith Murrell arrived with an incriminating tape, Brown told him he had the “golden egg,” Pozolo noted. In sum, Pozolo said, “Robert Kelly abused many girls over many years. He committed horrible crimes against children. And he didn’t do it alone.” “They want Derrel to be in that room. But I’m sorry to say the evidence says he was not,” Brindley said.
He argued in the cadence of a preacher, waving his hands and thrusting his fingers in the air to emphasize certain things.He was accompanied by a brightly colored slideshow that flashed his main points on the screen, often in huge white text on red and yellow backgrounds: “That story is just plain stupid,” one slide stated about Freeman. And on a subsequent slide, just one giant word: “Ridiculous.
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