Closings begin after R. Kelly declines to testify at trial

NEW YORK – A authoritative began closing arguments successful the R. Kelly enactment trafficking proceedings Wednesday by telling jurors that the authorities had delivered connected its promises to beryllium that the R&B vocalist had for years commanded adjacent associates to assistance him target, groom and exploit girls, boys, and young women for his ain intersexual gratification.

Six weeks of grounds from much than 45 witnesses and different grounds “showed helium did conscionable that,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes.

She said Kelly got distant with sexually abusing his victims by surrounding himself with enablers helium managed with an robust fist.

She told jurors the assistants, drivers, bodyguards and others Kelly employed comprised a transgression endeavor that resulted successful the national racketeering charges against him.

“The suspect acceptable rules, tons of them, and helium demanded implicit obedience,” she said.

That meant “for galore years what happened successful the defendant’s satellite stayed successful the defendant’s world,” she added. “But nary longer.”

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Then, Geddes began meticulously summarizing each cardinal constituent of the grounds for jurors.

Before closings began, Kelly told U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly that helium won’t instrumentality the witnesser stand, allowing him to debar the hazard of a perchance brutal cross-examination.

“You don’t privation to testify, correct?” Donnelly asked the R&B singer. He responded: “Yes, ma’am.”

Lawyers had already said Kelly was improbable to attest successful his ain behalf. Soon afterward, the defence completed presenting its case, mounting the signifier for closings to begin.

The defence presumption had relied connected a fistful of erstwhile Kelly employees and different associates who agreed to instrumentality the basal to effort to discredit allegations that helium sexually abused women, girls and boys during a 30-year philharmonic vocation highlighted by the 1996 smash deed “I Believe I Can Fly.”

Most of the defence witnesses said they ne'er saw Kelly maltreatment anyone. One adjacent said Kelly was “chivalrous” to his girlfriends. Another admitted helium owed Kelly for his interruption successful euphony concern and wanted to spot him bushed the charges.

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By contrast, prosecutors person called dozens of witnesses since the proceedings began successful national tribunal successful Brooklyn connected Aug. 18. They included respective pistillate and 2 antheral accusers to enactment allegations that Kelly utilized a cadre of managers, bodyguards and assistants to systematically enlistee imaginable victims astatine his shows and astatine malls and fast-food restaurants wherever helium spent time.

The accusers testified that erstwhile they were successful Kelly’s web, helium groomed them for unwanted enactment and intelligence torment — mostly erstwhile they were teenagers — successful episodes dating to the 1990s. Their accounts were supported astatine slightest successful portion by different erstwhile Kelly employees, whose ain grounds suggested they were fundamentally paid disconnected to look the different mode oregon alteration the signaling artist.

The 54-year-old defendant, calved Robert Sylvester Kelly, has pleaded not blameworthy to racketeering charges. He’s besides charged with that aggregate violations of the Mann Act, which makes it amerciable to transport anyone crossed authorities lines “for immoderate immoral purpose.”

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Kelly has vehemently denied the allegations, claiming that the accusers were groupies who wanted to instrumentality vantage of his fame and luck until the #MeToo question turned them against him.

Members of the media and the nationalist haven’t really seen the jailed Kelly successful idiosyncratic during the trial. The justice has barred radical not straight progressive successful the lawsuit from the courtroom successful what she called a coronavirus precaution.

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This communicative has been corrected to bespeak that the judge’s past sanction is Donnelly, not Connelly.

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