www.hitsville.org/tag/r-kelly -> www.hitsville.org/tag/r-kelly/
repeatedly confirms that Jamison relied exclusively on her best friend's face and hair to identify the girl and time-stamp the video. "You can't tell by looking at a person's vagina how old they are, can you?" he asks, then takes a stab at answering his own question: "I don't think you can." Once it's well-established that Jamison didn't pay much attention to the alleged victim's crotch and torso, Adam Jr. asks whether Jamison has seen a "Waymon Brothers" movie called Little Man "They took the head of Marlon Waymons and put it on a midget, and it looked real, didn't it?" exclaims, emphasizing the last two words for maximum "gotcha" effect. Jamison looks at him like he's a lunatic or, at least, an astoundingly bad film critic. "Not reeeally," she says, her voice lilting in disbelief as the courtroom breaks up. Congratulations to the Waymon Brothers: This is the first time Little Man has generated laughter. The Chicago Sun-Times has this riveting account of the insanity of this particular trial: R&B singer Stephanie "Sparkle" Edwards clashed with defense lawyer Ed Genson this afternoon when Genson said Edwards was driven by revenge and money in identifying a relative of hers as the girl on the R Kelly sex tape At one point, Edwards and Genson were shouting at each other simultaneously and the singer called the 66-year-old lawyer "Sweetie." The exchange drew a stern rebuke from Judge Vincent Gaughan. It's of course difficult to understand what's going on from second-hand accounts like this, but they read more than slightly absurdist. If you're a juror, you're wondering if the girl in the tape is under-aged. The prosecution has been bringing folks on to testify that they know who it is, and that she was under-age. The defense seems to be talking about extraneous things. Even if Edwards were using the tape to blackmail Kelly, it's irrelevant to the trial, if the girl on the tape is indeed her niece. The sense we're not getting is whether the defense attorneys are creating an efficient enough smokescreen. The girl in the tape is apparently not going to testify, and we've heard already that the defense lawyers is playing that up, with the implication that the prosecution has something to hide. Again, it's hard to sense the dynamic of the courtroom from this vantage point, but would jurors think it odd the poor girl in question wouldn't want to be on the stand? Last week, I posted a list of strands to follow during the rial. The most important is evidence of past Kelly indiscretions. As far as I have read, there has been no mention of his marriage to the 15-year-old singer Aaliyah, for example, much less his other legal problems involving charges that he has had sex with young girls. A good test of how good the coverage of the trial is will be whether reporters can explain he legal reasons behind whatever decision is made on this angle. A sideshow tomorrow will certainly be the subpoena of Sun-Times reporter Jim DeRogatis, who is reportedly supposed to appear in court.
The Godfather Who Shagged Me: The complete R Kelly SexFacts(TM)--Everything you ever wanted to know about the R Kelly case R Kelly's Publicist: He slept with my daughter!
It's hilarious: A little bit after 1 pm, the blinds are drawn and the lights go down. For the jury, there's a giant screen on wheels in front of the jury box. For the press, there's a Sony flat screen, lashed to an A/V cart with thick orange straps as if it's a flight risk. The VHS tape starts to roll, and the first voice I hear belongs to Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer, the one-time spokesman for the Money Store. As Palmer explains how you can easily lower your monthly payments, a guy with a shaved head who looks a lot like R Kelly hands a young woman a folded-up stack of cash. He goes off-camera and turns off the television, perhaps fearing that canned laughter isn't an appropriate backing track for a taped sexual performance.
the original stories in the Chicago Sun-Times that readers have been given a true accounting of what the man police say is R Kelly actually does in the video: Kelly's lawyers tried, exhaustively but futilely, to prevent the jury from seeing the video. This is understandable--when you're defending an accused child pornographer, it's best not to have the jury hear a man who looks just like your client refer to himself, on tape, as "daddy" as he begins to have intercourse with the alleged victim. ") There's also the matter of his prolonged urination on the girl's face and breasts, which stops and starts, and stops and starts, for what seems like minutes on end.
The Godfather Who Shagged Me: The complete R Kelly SexFacts(TM)--Everything you ever wanted to know about the R Kelly case R Kelly's Publicist: He slept with my daughter!
as I noted the other day, the paper does a lot of things well, and it's just easy couch-potato action to sit on the sidelines and attack it for minor oversights. But each day brings a new weirdness when it comes to the Times and R Kelly.
here, the paper has invested an enormous amount of news space telling us how talented and funky and freaky R Kelly is over the past six years, but has been comparatively parsimonious in space devoted to letting readers in on the full slate of the trouble he's gotten himself into over that same time period. Since this trouble involves being accused in about a dozen credible cases of sexually molesting young girls, at least three of these on film, that parsimony itself comes across as a little ....
a short blurb detailing the defense's opening statement, and the news that the judge warned jurors they would soon be watching the videotape at the center of the case. The item attributed this news to the AP, since the Times apparently isn't paying for anyone to cover the trial. But the AP yesterday reported that jurors were actually shown the tape, which has been previously said to show Kelly having sex with the girl, asking her to urinate, and then urinating in her mouth, though the AP didn't explain all of that to its readers, either. I realize this is less tasteful than just saying Kelly is really "freaky," but that happens sometimes. Isn't the public showing of a such a film starring a name as big as Kelly news for the paper of record?
The Godfather Who Shagged Me: The complete R Kelly SexFacts(TM)--Everything you ever wanted to know about the R Kelly case R Kelly's Publicist: He slept with my daughter!
jpg Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis and Hitsville are old friends. Because of this, I can with enthusiasm list the myriad things for which he should be hauled in front of a court, and cite a few others for which he should probably be jailed, some of these having to do with his deep interest in psychedelic rock.
a 26-minute videotape of what appeared to be Kelly having sex with a young girl. The paper turned the tape over to police, and it became the catalyst for Kelly's trial, six years later, which just got underway in Chicago this week. While on one level it's within the court's purview to establish the provenance of the tape, putting a reporter on the stand might also give the defense the opportunity to ask him about sources over the course of his extensive (and it should be pointed out) very lonely reporting on Kelly. Meanwhile, at the trial, the prosecution played the tape for the jury.
Reported the AP: Prosecutors played the sex tape at the center of R Kelly's child pornography trial in open court Tuesday, just hours after opening statements in which they accused the R&B singer of choreographing and starring in the footage with an underage girl. The jurors, who had been taking feverish notes during opening statements, sat motionless while the video played. Their eyes were fixed on a 4-by-4-foot monitor just outside the jurors' box; in the courtroom, the lights were dimmed and blinds drawn across windows. A grim-looking Kelly, 41, appeared to watch the entire footage intently on a small monitor on the defense table. He occasionally rocked in his chair and rested his chin in his hand. The story described the tape like this: The 27-minute homemade video shows a man having sex with a young female, who is n...
|
http://csua.com/feed/