Singer R Kelly Refuses to testify in sex trafficking trial

Disgraced R&B singer, R. Kelly told a judge on Wednesday September 22, that he will not testify in his own defense at his federal sex trafficking trial to avoid avoid the risk of a potentially brutal cross-examination.

‘You don’t want to testify, correct?’ US District Judge Ann Connelly asked the singer. He laconically responded: ‘Yes, ma’am.’

When asked by the judge if he understood the implications of his decision, he replied: ‘correct.’ Lawyers had already said Kelly was unlikely to take the witness stand.

During the closing arguments on Wednesday afternoon, a prosecutor told jurors that the government had delivered on its promises to prove that the R&B singer had for years commanded close associates to help him target, groom and exploit girls, boys, and young women for his own sexual gratification.

Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Geddes insisted that the trial ‘showed he did just that.’

She said that Kelly got away with sexually abusing his victims by surrounding himself with a team which he strictly controlled. She described the assistants, drivers, bodyguards and others Kelly employed as a criminal enterprise that resulted in the federal racketeering charges brought against him.

‘The defendant set rules, lots of them, and he demanded complete obedience,’ she explained. That meant ‘for many years what happened in the defendant´s world stayed in the defendant´s world. But no longer.’

READ ALSO: 2 Nigerian ladies found guilty of trafficking poor girls for prostitution in Ireland

Jurors could begin deliberating as early as Thursday. Kelly, 54, faces a life sentence, if convicted as charged.

The brief defense case has relied on just a handful of former Kelly employees and other associates who agreed to take the stand over the course of two days to try to discredit allegations that he sexually abused women, girls and boys during a 30-year musical career.

About The Author

Osmek News

See author's posts