Chicago-born R&B superstar R. Kelly is set to head to trial Monday in his hometown, where the singer will face charges for filming sex acts with underage girls and conspiring to rig his 2008 child pornography trial that ended in a controversial not-guilty verdict.
Jury selection at the Dirksen Federal Building in the Loop is set to begin just weeks after the star was sentenced to 30 years in prison on racketeering and sex-trafficking charges following a guilty verdict in federal court in New York.
The federal trial in Chicago looks to cover much of the same ground as the state child pornography trial in 2008, a case prosecutors say ended in acquittal because of payoffs to witnesses by Kelly, handled by his co-defendants and former employees, Derrel McDavid and Milton “June” Brown.
There are expected to be crucial differences from the case Kelly beat more than a decade ago, including testimony from the victim featured in the video at the heart of the 2008 case. Then, she allegedly lied to investigators and a grand jury at the singer’s behest, and refused to take the stand.
The alleged victim, identified in court filings as “Minor 1,” had denied allegations she had sex with Kelly when she was as young as 13, as did her parents. But those denials were the result of payoffs and gifts that included sending the girl and her family to Mexico and the Bahamas to put them beyond the reach of Chicago police detectives who were investigating Kelly in 2001.
The charges allege Kelly coached the girl lie to police investigating the singer, and the singer’s lawyers were in the grand jury room when the girl and her parents denied the allegations. Kelly still was sending the girl monthly payments as late as 2015, prosecutors said. The alleged victim is expected to testify that her denials then were false, and that she and Kelly in fact had sex “hundreds” of times while she was a minor.
Kelly’s former manager, McDavid, and Brown are charged with the singer for helping coordinate payoffs to other victims and round up videos of the singer with underage girls.
During Kelly’s 2008 child porn trial, Kelly’s attorney had mocked witnesses who said the superstar had carried homemade videos showing him having sex with underage girls in a duffel bag — “like porno Santa Claus.”
A decade later, filings by prosecutors cite the contents of multiple videos showing the star having sex with several victims, and that he often carried them in a duffel. One victim, identified as “Minor 5,” told investigators there were cameras and tripods set up “everywhere” at Kelly’s former home in Lincoln Park during the late 1990s.
Prosecutors have charged that Brown and McDavid allegedly coordinated efforts to recover tapes that had made it into others’ hands, with McDavid once offering a payout of more than $1 million to a man hired to recover two tapes, prosecutors said.
Coming on the heels of his sentencing in New York, the trial marks a new low for Kelly, whose popularity had remained undiminished even after he was indicted in 2006. That shifted sharply after the 2019 airing of “Surviving R. Kelly,” a multi-part documentary that featured interviews with multiple women who said they had been in sexual relationships with Kelly when they were underage.
Kelly’s New York trial took place largely undisturbed by fans, though a suburban Chicago man was charged after the trial for attempting to rally Kelly supporters to storm the offices of federal prosecutors.
At his sentencing hearing last month in New York, Kelly’s lawyers had argued the 30-year-prison term was effectively a life sentence for the 55-year-old singer. A guilty verdict in Chicago federal court could lead to another decades-long sentence, and Cook County prosecutors still have a pending sexual assault case against Kelly.
