The long-awaited trial of R&B Star R. Kelly has begun on Monday with jury selection.
Gatekeepers News reports that the first phase of the sex trafficking trial of Robert Sylvester Kelly, popularly known as R. Kelly has finally commenced with a jury selection in New York City on Monday.
Several attempts to release the singer who was arrested in July 2019 have failed because of the lingering health threats caused by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Aside from this, Kelly’s trial in the Eastern District of New York before U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly has also been delayed multiple times because of the scheduling conflicts with some of the other three criminal cases he is facing.
The 54-year-old is charged with multiple counts, including child pornography, kidnapping, obstruction of justice, sex trafficking, and racketeering for purposes of sexual exploitation of children in New York.
The prosecutors also accused Kelly of leading “a criminal enterprise” of managers, bodyguards, and other employees, who allegedly helped him to recruit women and underage girls for sex and pornography, and to cross state lines for that purpose.
The Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling singer who
has been locked up since his indictment in 2019, was mostly housed in a federal jail in Chicago. Last month, Kelly was moved to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to face trial in a case that’s further diminished his celebrity status.
He has, however, denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges. The Federal prosecutors selected victims at concerts and other venues and arranged for them to travel to see Kelly.
Meanwhile, the defense lawyers have said Kelly’s alleged victims were groupies who turned up at his shows and made it known they “were dying to be with him.” They added, that these groupies only started accusing him of abuse years later when public sentiment shifted in the #MeToo era.
The trial was expected to start earlier in the year, but opening statements were moved to Aug. 18 after Kelly fired his original lawyers.
At the Jury selection on Monday, Judge Donnelly began questioning potential jurors about whether they can keep an open mind about the case and reminded them that the defendant was presumed innocent, stressing they should not be influenced by anything they’ve previously heard about the case.
The proceeding was held in compliance with the pandemic precautions, restricting the press and the public to overflow courtrooms with video feeds. The R&B star and the potential jurors weren’t clearly visible on the feeds and the audio was often faint much of the time.
The process was expected to last at least until the end of the day Monday and possibly into Tuesday.
A judge has ruled that accusers will only be referred to by their first names. Jurors are also expected to hear testimony from the women.
Also, prosecutors are expected to offer evidence that Kelly schemed with others to pay for a fake ID for Aaliyah, a singer on the rise at 15 years old, in a secret ceremony in 1994.
The late Aaliyah is identified as “Jane Doe #1” in court papers because she was still a minor when Kelly began a sexual relationship with her and believed she had become pregnant.
According to the papers, “As a result, in an effort to shield himself from criminal charges related to his illegal sexual relationship with Jane Doe #1, Kelly arranged to secretly marry her to prevent her from being compelled to testify against him in the future.”
Aaliyah Dana Haughton well known as 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 case is only part of the legal peril facing Kelly, as he has also pleaded not guilty to sex-related charges in Illinois and Minnesota.
He has been trialed for decades by complaints and allegations about his sexual behaviour, including a 2002 child pornography case in Chicago. Kelly was acquitted in that case in 2008.
In recent years, scrutiny intensified again amid the #MeToo movement, with multiple women going public with accusations against him.
The pressure got to its peak after the release of the Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” in 2019.
