R. Kelly's playboy lifestyle wasn’t racketeering conspiracy, defense argues

NEW YORK — Chicago-born R&B singer R. Kelly was an international sex symbol known for his playboy lifestyle, but his relationships were consensual and the women who lined up to testify that he sexually abused them are lying to get a payday, Kelly’s lawyer told jurors in his closing argument of the singer’s racketeering trial in New York Thursday.

“He told everyone he has multiple girlfriends, and asked each and every one of them their age,” attorney Deveraux Cannick said. “He said, ‘This is my lifestyle and you can step into it or not.’”

Pacing the floor of the courtroom and occasionally raising his voice to a shout, Cannick repeatedly accused the government of allowing witnesses to come in and lie to win the big prize — a conviction of Kelly.

“Getting a conviction of R. Kelly is a big deal,” he said. “They gotta try to bring home the bacon.”

Cannick’s closing remarks came after nearly six weeks of testimony from some 50 witnesses in the case against Kelly, whom prosecutors accuse of masterminding a criminal enterprise aimed at satisfying his illegal sexual appetites.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations after prosecutors deliver their rebuttal arguments, which could stretch into Friday.

In his remarks, Cannick said prosecutors were trying to shoehorn small, completely legal things into criminal racketeering acts. He mocked testimony that traveling with girlfriends consensually across state lines was somehow illegal, as well as testimony that Kelly allegedly demanded his girlfriends refer to him as “Daddy,” which he likened to the words “Papi” in Spanish or “Ho” in Black culture.

“Daddy? It’s almost a crime to call a man a Daddy? I guess people can’t do that anymore,” Cannick said.

Cannick said Kelly prefers, in some instances, “the May to October relationship” of an older man with a “woman slightly younger.” He also likes kinky sex, Cannick acknowledged.

“Some people just like kinky sex. There’s not a crime in kinky sex,” he said.

He said prosecutors were asking jurors to speculate over allegations of rape where there was absolutely no physical evidence to corroborate it. In one instance, he said, prosecutors wanted jurors to believe a sexual assault had been proven because a victim was able to remember the floor plan of Kelly’s music studio.

The evidence, he said, should be “not a floor plan, but a rape kit.”

“She says she was raped? Rape kit, police report,” Cannick said. “Somebody’s life is at stake here.”

U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly called a break after about an hour and a half of Cannick’s arguments. He’s scheduled to finish later Thursday.

Closing arguments in the case began Wednesday, with prosecutors telling the jury the singer for years “used his money and public persona to hide his crimes in plain sight.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes wrapped up her argument, which totaled about 6 1/2 hours, around midday Thursday, saying, “It is time to hold the defendant responsible for the pain that he inflicted on each of his victims,” and listing the six woman included in the main racketeering charge each by their first name. “Convict him.”

Kelly, dressed in a blue suit and wearing a face mask, was animated at the defense table while Geddes wrapped up, scribbling notes, shaking his head and sometimes rubbing his temples.

Kelly, 54, was charged in an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn in 2019 with heading a criminal enterprise that employed agents, runners, bodyguards and others to lure and trap girls and young women to satisfy his sexually predatory desires.

He faces decades in prison if convicted of the main racketeering charge, though the jury could decide to convict on lesser charges of kidnapping or violations of the Mann Act, which prohibits traveling over state lines for illegal sexual acts.

Geddes’ argument on Wednesday and Thursday featured a large poster board display set up in the middle of U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly’s courtroom, which included a mug shot of Kelly in the center with various members of his ever-revolving entourage surrounding him.

Geddes said that the organization had legitimate goals, mainly to promote Kelly’s brand and sell his records. But it also had a dark purpose, to recruit and groom girls, boys and young women to satisfy his illegal sexual urges, she said.

To further that goal, Kelly depended on his team to keep victims in line, the prosecutor said. They helped keep them confined to rooms in his Olympia Fields mansion, handed out copies of Kelly’s bizarre “rules,” carried backpacks filled with iPads Kelly used to film sexual encounters, and even offered condoms to one victim before she went in to see Kelly, Geddes said.

“The names have changed, but their roles have remained the same since the beginning,” Geddes said. “For many years, what happened in the defendant’s world stayed in the defendant’s world. … Without his inner circle, (Kelly) could not have carried the crimes for as long as he did.”

The prosecutor methodically reviewed the racketeering charge and the 14 underlying criminal acts Kelly is alleged to have committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. She stitched together testimony from alleged victims and other witnesses with corroborating evidence such as phone records, text messages and DNA tests to paint a picture of Kelly as controlling and sexually violent predator who, as one former runner testified, operated in sort of a depraved “Twilight Zone.”

“The defendant was more than just a part of an enterprise, he was its leader,” Geddes said.

On Thursday, Geddes spent more than two hours talking about the various “textbook” tactics Kelly used to control his victims, including intimidation, physical abuse, isolation, and indoctrination by setting strict rules.

Geddes talked about a video where Kelly was seen telling one victim, “Anna,” that she’d broken his rules and was about to get “four licks.” He then spanked her violently, and later ordered her to walk back and forth on video and call herself a “stupid (expletive),” according to Geddes.

“You saw the absolute anguish on Anna’s face as the defendant spanked her,” Geddes told the jury.

She also talked about the alleged abuse of “Jane,” an aspiring singer who testified Kelly brought her out to California for sex when she was 17 and he was 48.

“He was an accomplished R&B star. She was a junior in high school with dreams of being a singer,” Geddes said. “The power and balance was firmly in place from Day One. And as you’ve learned, Kelly took full advantage.”

Before closing arguments began, Kelly officially confirmed Wednesday that he did not wish to testify in his own defense — a decision that had been widely anticipated as it would have subjected him to an undoubtedly rigorous cross-examination from prosecutors.

When Donnelly asked him if he’d had a chance to speak with his attorneys about the decision, Kelly said, “Yes ma’am, your honor.”

As in most criminal trials, the bulk of the defense’s case has come out in cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.

Meanwhile, in her closing argument Wednesday afternoon, Geddes spent nearly an hour dissecting one of the key racketeering acts in the indictment: The alleged bribery of an Illinois public aid official to obtain a phony ID so he could marry phenom singer Aaliyah in 1994, when she was just 15.

Geddes pointed to the reluctant testimony of Kelly’s former tour manager, Demetrius Smith, who told the jury near the beginning of the trial that he and Kelly left a tour in Georgia and had flown to O’Hare International Airport for the quick wedding ceremony, which occurred at a Sheraton Hotel near the airport with Kelly and Aaliyah wearing matching sweatpants.

She cited other testimony that Kelly had decided to marry Aaliyah because he believed he’d impregnated her and wanted legal cover. He also wanted her to have an abortion, Geddes said.

“We all know what the defendant was thinking: No baby, no jail,” Geddes said.

Geddes later reviewed testimony about other victims, including Jerhonda Pace, the prosecution’s first witness in the trial, who testified that she and Kelly had a six-month sexual relationship in 2009 when she was just 16. Pace had met Kelly months earlier at his first criminal trial in Cook County, where he was acquitted of child pornography charges.

Geddes also detailed the testimony from Stephanie, who said she met the singer at a McDonald’s in Chicago when she was 16 and that Kelly later videotaped himself having sex with her; as well as that of Sonja, an aspiring radio broadcaster who said she flew to Chicago for an interview with Kelly at his Chicago studio, where instead she was confined to a room for days, drugged, and sexually assaulted.

“Her big break had turned into her nightmare,” Geddes told the jury.

The New York case is the first of Kelly’s many criminal charges to go to trial. He also faces a case in Chicago’s federal courthouse, where prosecutors allege he and two others fixed his 2008 trial in Cook County.

Kelly was acquitted in that trial, but in 2019 county prosecutors brought four new indictments against him, all of which are still pending at Chicago’s Leighton Criminal Court Building. Kelly also faces a solicitation case in state court in Minnesota.