R Kelly found guilty of multiple counts of child porn

(CMR) R&B star R. Kelly was convicted of several child pornography and sex abuse charges in his hometown of Chicago on Wednesday. Kelly (55) was found guilty on three counts of child pornography and three counts of child enticement.

But the jury acquitted him on a fourth pornography count and a conspiracy to obstruct justice charge, accusing him of fixing his state child pornography trial in 2008. He was found not guilty on all three counts of conspiring to receive child pornography and for two further enticement charges.

Prosecutors said Kelly was a master manipulator who used his fame and wealth to reel in star-stuck fans, some of them minors, to sexually abuse and then discard them. Witnesses said Kelly offered up to $1 million to recover missing videos before his 2008 trial, knowing they would land him in legal peril. Prosecutors said that the conspiracy to hide his abuse ran from 2000 to 2020.

Kelly associates Derrel McDavid, and Milton Brown were co-defendants at the Chicago trial. Jurors acquitted McDavid, a longtime Kelly business manager, who was accused of conspiring with Kelly to rig the 2008 trial. Brown, a Kelly associate for years, was acquitted of receiving child pornography.

During closing arguments Tuesday, Kelly's attorney Jennifer Bonjean likened the government's testimony and evidence to a cockroach and its case to a bowl of soup.

“If a cockroach falls into soup, you don't just pull out the cockroach and eat the rest of the soup. You throw out the whole soup,” she told jurors.

“There are just too many cockroaches,” she said of the prosecution's case.

CNN reported that jurors deliberated for about 10 hours after listening to three weeks-worth of testimony, including from one woman who testified anonymously that Kelly sexually abused her and recorded the interactions when she was as young as 14.

In Chicago, a conviction of just one count of child pornography carries a minimum sentence of 10 years, while receipt of child pornography carries a minimum of five years. Judges can order that defendants sentenced earlier in separate cases serve their new sentence simultaneously with or only after the first term is fully done. Federal inmates must serve at least 85% of their sentences.

This conviction comes after Kelly received a 30-year prison sentence after he was found guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering in a separate federal case in Brooklyn.