{"id":24983,"date":"2022-08-19T08:38:17","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T08:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=24983"},"modified":"2022-08-19T08:38:17","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T08:38:17","slug":"r-kelly-lawyer-get-the-chance-to-question-government-witness-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/08\/19\/r-kelly-lawyer-get-the-chance-to-question-government-witness-today\/","title":{"rendered":"R.Kelly lawyer get the chance to question Government witness today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>R. Kelly\u2019s legal team will get its chance to question the government\u2019s star witness on Friday after she gave what jurors could see as damning testimony against Kelly at his federal trial in Chicago on charges that include the production of child pornography.<\/p>\n<p>Jane, the pseudonym used for her during the trial, has been central to Kelly\u2019s legal troubles for more than two decades. She testified for over four hours Thursday, telling jurors it was her and Kelly in a videotape that was at the heart of his 2008 child pornography trial, at which he was acquitted.<\/p>\n<p>Jane, now 37, paused, tugged at a necklace and dabbed her eyes with a tissue as she said publicly for the first time that the girl in the video was her and that the man was Kelly.<\/p>\n<p>When a prosecutor asked Jane how old she was at the time the video was shot, she said quietly: \u201c14.\u201d Kelly, 55, would have been around 30 years old at the time.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-placeholder\"><\/div>\n<p>In addition to charges of child pornography and enticement of minors, Kelly faces charges of conspiring to rig that 2008 trial by intimidating and paying off the girl to ensure she didn<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--apostrophe\">\u2019<\/span>t testify then.<\/p>\n<p>Some jurors who presided over that 2008 trial, which was on state charges, said that they had no choice but to acquit the R&amp;B star because the girl \u2014 by then an adult \u2014 didn<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--apostrophe\">\u2019<\/span>t testify. On the stand Thursday, Jane conceded that she lied to a state grand jury in 2002 when she said that it was not her in the video.<\/p>\n<p>I was afraid something bad would happen to Robert,<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--closing-double\">\u201d<\/span> she told jurors about why she didn<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--apostrophe\">\u2019<\/span>t tell the truth then, referring to Kelly by his full first name. \u201cI was protecting him.<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--closing-double\">\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>She added there was another reason she lied about the identity of the person in the video. \u201cI also did not want that person to be me,<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--closing-double\">\u201d<\/span> she told jurors. \u201cI was ashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dressed in a white dress coat and removing a face mask before testifying, Jane remained on the witness stand for over four hours for the government. Kelly<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--apostrophe\">\u2019<\/span>s attorney was scheduled to get her chance to cross<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--ignored\">&#8211;<\/span>examine Jane starting Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p>A prosecutor asked Jane toward the end of the day Thursday why she decided in recent years to begin speaking honestly about what happened with Kelly, who Jane said she continued to care for and sometimes live with into her 20s.<\/p>\n<div class=\"stretchy-wrapper\">\n<div id=\"2cd6e3db9bcf4765b2b3f91a387ef3b4\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/eDVe4vlxBeg\/0.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"media-caption\">Opening statements set for Wednesday give prosecutors and R. Kelly<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--apostrophe\">\u2019<\/span>s attorneys their first chance to address jurors directly about charges that accuse the R&amp;B singer of enticing of minors for sex, producing child pornography and rigging his 2008 pornography trial. (Aug. 17)<\/div>\n<div class=\"ad-placeholder\"><\/div>\n<p>\u201cI became exhausted living with his lies,\u201d she answered. She added that federal prosecutors assured her she would not be charged with lying to authorities if she testified truthfully at this trial.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, Jane also became emotional when she was asked to explain why Kelly can be seen handing money to her in the video. She said it was a precaution against anyone accusing him of abusing a child if the video ever fell into the hands of authorities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf anyone saw the tape &#8230; he wanted it to appear as if I was a prostitute,<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--closing-double\">\u201d<\/span> Jane said.<\/p>\n<p>She described her parents confronting Kelly in the early 2000s about whether he was having sex with their daughter. Kelly dropped to his knees and begged her parents to forgive him, Jane testified. She said she later implored her parents not to do anything to get Kelly in trouble, telling them she loved him.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-placeholder\"><\/div>\n<p>As she spoke, Kelly mostly stared down at the defense table and rarely looked up at her. She, too, rarely looked in his direction.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, she testified that Kelly sexually abused her \u201chundreds\u201d of times before she turned 18 years old, starting when she was 15. She said they were having oral sex in the video and that she was 14 at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Jane told jurors that in the late 1990s when she was 13, she asked the Grammy award<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--ignored\">&#8211;<\/span>winning singer to be her godfather because she saw him as an inspiration and mentor.<\/p>\n<p>She said within weeks, Kelly would call her and say sexual things. She told jurors she was 15 when they first had intercourse.<\/p>\n<p>Asked by a prosecutor how she would know what to do sexually, Jane answered, \u201cHe would tell me what to do.\u201d Asked how many times they had sex before she turned 18, she answered quietly: \u201cUncountable times. \u2026 Hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A federal judge in New York sentenced Kelly to a 30<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--ignored\">&#8211;<\/span>year prison sentence this year for his 2021 conviction for using his fame to sexually abuse fans.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-placeholder\"><\/div>\n<p>Speaking softly and tentatively when she first took the stand Thursday, Jane described her upbringing in a musical family in a Chicago suburb, including that she was home<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--ignored\">&#8211;<\/span>schooled because she was in a touring musical group that she joined when she was about 12.<\/p>\n<p>Jane first met Kelly in the late 1990s when she was in junior high school. She had tagged along to Kelly\u2019s Chicago recording studio with her aunt, a professional singer who worked with Kelly. Soon after that meeting, Jane told her parents that Kelly was going to be her godfather.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly, who rose from poverty on Chicago\u2019s South Side to become a star singer, songwriter and producer, knew a conviction in 2008 would effectively end his life as he knew it, and so prosecutors say he conspired to fix that trial.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly has been trailed for decades by complaints and allegations about his sexual behavior. The scrutiny intensified after the #MeToo era and the 2019 six<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--ignored\">&#8211;<\/span>part documentary \u201cSurviving R. Kelly.<span class=\"typographizer-debug typographizer-debug--closing-double\">\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-placeholder\"><\/div>\n<p>Kelly also faces four counts of enticement of minors for sex at the Chicago trial \u2014 one each for four other accusers. They, too, are expected to testify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>R. Kelly\u2019s legal team will get its chance to question the government\u2019s star witness on Friday after she gave what jurors could see as damning testimony against Kelly at his federal trial in Chicago on charges that include the production of child pornography. Jane, the pseudonym used for her during the trial, has been central [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":24984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[4791,10620,11264,8924,9784,9194,854,9214,9560,2808,9478,5935,5455,9026,2264,3270,2702,7734,12005,6580,4054,10776,5423,9833,5612,990,11973,12238,3599,9431,8306,4817,987,6736,11307,7584,11259,6838,7858,9804,11581,146,8033,6571,3954,594],"class_list":["post-24983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-abuse","tag-acquitted","tag-allegations","tag-chance","tag-charged","tag-charges","tag-chicago","tag-child","tag-conviction","tag-daughter","tag-dropped","tag-face-mask","tag-family","tag-fans","tag-government","tag-grammy","tag-identity","tag-jane","tag-judge","tag-jury","tag-kelly","tag-lawyer","tag-lies","tag-meeting","tag-money","tag-new-york","tag-one","tag-oral","tag-pornography","tag-poverty","tag-prison","tag-prison-sentence","tag-r-kelly","tag-school","tag-sentence","tag-sex","tag-shot","tag-singer","tag-tell-me","tag-testify","tag-trial","tag-truth","tag-video","tag-white","tag-will","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}