Jury of seven males and 5 girls chosen for R. Kelly’s intercourse trafficking trial in New York Metropolis
R&B star R. Kelly will face an nameless jury made up of seven males and 5 girls when his New York Metropolis intercourse trafficking trial goes ahead subsequent week with opening statements. Lingering well being threats attributable to the coronavirus pandemic and a shakeup of Kelly’s protection crew pushed the trial into the summer season, almost two years after he was charged with abusing girls and women for almost twenty years.
The panel was sworn in on Wednesday after dozens of potential jurors had been screened by U.S. District Decide Ann Donnelly in federal court docket in Brooklyn.
The choose sought assurances from potential jurors that they may stay neutral regardless of the dangerous publicity swirling round Robert Sylvester Kelly since his 2019 arrest. Some advised her that they had been primarily conscious of the 54-year-old from his smash hit “I Imagine I Can Fly.” Many stated they knew little or nothing concerning the case.
The jury choice spanned three days, with Kelly seen on a video feed sitting impassively on the protection desk, sporting glasses and wearing a go well with. The scene was beamed into an overflow courtroom after a choose took the weird step of barring the press and public from watching trial in individual, citing coronavirus issues.
The multiplatinum-selling singer has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not responsible to costs accusing him of main an enterprise of managers, bodyguards and different staff who helped him recruit girls and women for intercourse. Federal prosecutors say the group chosen victims at live shows and different venues and organized for them to journey to see Kelly.
Protection attorneys have stated Kelly’s alleged victims had been groupies who turned up at his exhibits and made it identified they “had been dying to be with him.” The ladies solely began accusing him of abuse years later when public sentiment shifted within the #MeToo period, they stated.
The case is just a part of the authorized peril going through the singer. He additionally has pleaded not responsible to sex-related costs in Illinois and Minnesota. Kelly has been incarcerated since he was indicted in 2019, and has principally been held in a federal jail in Chicago. Final month, he was moved to the federal Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn to face trial.
Kelly has been trailed for many years by complaints and allegations about his sexual habits, together with a 2002 baby pornography case in Chicago. He was acquitted in that case in 2008.
