Jury deliberating at R Kelly's child pornography and trial-fixing case following closing arguments

Jurors were set to begin deliberating for a second day on Wednesday (Sep 14) at R Kelly's federal trial in Chicago, sorting through a month of evidence and arguments on charges accusing the singer of producing child pornography, enticing minors for sex and rigging his 2008 child porn trial.

Jurors must consider 13 separate counts, some involving complex law and assessments of which witnesses were more believable. They began deliberating on Tuesday after Judge Harry Leinenweber gave them jury instructions, including explicit descriptions of what constitutes sexual abuse.

Before they withdrew on Tuesday, Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonjean sounded indignant, likening government testimony and evidence to a cockroach and the government’s case to a bowl of soup.

If a cockroach falls into soup, she said, “you don’t just pull out the cockroach and eat the rest of the soup. You throw out the whole soup," said told jurors. She said of the prosecution’s case: “There are just too many cockroaches.”

Kelly, 55, was sentenced in June to 30 years in prison during a separate federal trial in New York where he was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking. Convictions on just a few of the 13 counts Kelly faces at his current trial could add years to his imprisonment.

In her rebuttal on Tuesday, prosecutor Jeannice Appenteng told jurors to remember the girls and women Kelly allegedly abused.

"When you are in the quiet of the jury room, consider the evidence in light of who is at the centre of this case. Kelly's victims: Jane, Nia, Pauline, Tracy and Brittany," Appenteng said, referring to five Kelly accusers named in charging documents by their pseudonyms or first names.

The prosecutor also pointed to testimony that as Kelly's fame boomed in the mid-1990s, his staff and associates increasingly geared everything they did to what Kelly wanted.

"And ladies and gentlemen, what R Kelly wanted was to have sex with young girls," she said.

Bonjean described Kelly as a flawed genius who has been functionally illiterate since childhood and was ill-equipped to navigate his celebrity and expanding wealth. She said having been abused as a child also deeply affected him.

Bonjean twice called for a mistrial on Monday, complaining that closing arguments by attorneys for Kelly co-defendants Derrell McDavid and Milton Brown were grounded in the presumption that "the world now knows Mr Kelly is a sex predator".

"The presumption of innocence has been abolished for him," she said. Judge Harry Leinenweber denied the requests.

Known for his smash hit I Believe I Can Fly and for sex-infused songs such as Bump n' Grind, Kelly sold millions of albums even after allegations of sexual misconduct began circulating in the 1990s. Widespread outrage emerged after the #MeToo reckoning and the 2019 Lifetime docuseries Surviving R Kelly.

Kelly and co-defendant Derrell McDavid, Kelly's ex-business manager, are accused of fixing Kelly's 2008 trial on state child porn charges by intimidating and paying off witnesses.

Kelly faces four counts of producing child porn, one of conspiring to obstruct justice by fixing the 2008 trial, one of conspiring to receive child porn, two of actually receiving it and five of enticing minors for sex.

McDavid is charged with four counts – two for receiving child porn, one for conspiring to do so and one for conspiring to obstruct justice by rigging the 2008 trial, at which Kelly was acquitted.

Co-defendant Milton Brown, a former Kelly associate, faces a single count of conspiring to receive child pornography.