R. Kelly: Trapped in the Courtroom
Lisa Van Allen and her fiancé, Yul Brown, were driving away from a Fogo de Châo in Atlanta when the hip-hop station on their car radio broke for a news bulletin.
“Take your R. Kelly CDs out,” the DJ crowed. “He has been found not guilty.”
Brown pulled his BMW into the emergency lane. Damn. The jury had only taken a few hours to let him go on all 14 counts of child pornography. Van Allen had flown up to Chicago, four months pregnant, and told her truth about R. Kelly: how he’d seduced her when she was just 17, how he’d forced her to participate in a threesome with the girl who appeared on the sex tape, how he’d taped that little orgy. And the jury hadn’t believed a word. They’d believed Kelly’s lawyers, who called Van Allen a streetwalker and quoted the Bible to compare her to Satan.
Van Allen didn’t want to see Kelly in prison. She wanted him to get help for his teenage-girl fixation. That’s not something you can just turn off, she felt; it’s a sexual preference. And beating this rap might convince him he was above the age-of-consent law.
Two thousand miles away, at a Whole Foods Market in Las Vegas, Stephanie “Sparkle” Edwards heard her cell phone chime. A text message:
R. Kelly not guilty. Sparkle, who duetted with Kelly on the 1998 hit “Be Careful,” had testified out of remorse. That was her niece on the sex tape, she maintained. The niece she’d introduced to Kelly when the girl was just 12. Sparkle had prayed that God would help her accept the verdict. But her worldly side wanted Kelly held accountable, and she felt defeated. Her last gig was as a backup singer in Toni Braxton’s Las Vegas revue, which closed in April. Kelly was the Pied Piper of R&B, with 33 million albums sold. How could her testimony compete with his money? Sparkle believed her niece’s family had been accepting gifts from Kelly. The girl’s father had been given a spot as Kelly’s guitarist.
Van Allen and Sparkle were the ladies in red at R. Kelly’s trial—an ex-lover and a one-time protégée who rolled over on their old friend. Kelly’s lawyers portrayed them as bitter, discarded women out to extort money from a superstar. They were the key witnesses in the month-long prosecution of Robert Kelly, a campaign that failed when a jury found him not guilty of pissing on the teenage girl he called his goddaughter, and making a videotape of the event. Now that it’s over, it’s worth asking the question: Did R. Kelly piss on justice?
When R. Kelly was arrested in 2002 on charges of child pornography, back before the U.S. invaded Iraq, radio stations stopped playing his music and preachers held CD-snapping rallies. By the time his trial started, six years later, the outrage had dwindled to a pair of Muslims standing in front of the Cook County Criminal Courts Building with a sign dishonoring Kelly as the World’s Greatest Pedophile. They were outnumbered—and outshouted—by young women there to squeal at Kells.
Kelly’s black Escalade glided to the curb. The girls surged.
“We love you, Rob!” Jerhonda Johnson cried, earning a stiff-armed wave from Kelly.
Johnson was 18—with the ID to prove it—and planned to spend the next few weeks at the courthouse, testing her personal system of justice: If he’s hot, he must be innocent.
“I’ve seen that tape. That ain’t him on that tape. He wouldn’t do nothin’ like that,” Johnson said.
“So what would you say if R. Kelly asked you out?” I inquired.“Yes! He ain’t even gotta finish the sentence.”
“What if he wanted to tape you?”
Johnson paused a beat.
“Just don’t let it go public.”
The building where Kelly stood trial is a Romanesque temple built in the 1920s, Chicago’s original gangster era—it housed Al Capone before he went to Alcatraz. Cops and gangbangers alike call it 26th and California, after the forlorn street corner it dominates. Kelly was 26th and Cal’s most famous visitor since John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death there in 1980. In acknowledgement of Kelly’s stardom, the handicap ramp was designated the R. Kelly entrance, so paparazzi wouldn’t knock over mopes climbing the stairs to plead on shoplifting.
In acknowledgement of Kelly’s alleged home-taping hobby, Courtroom 500 had been outfitted with a big-screen TV worthy of a sports bar. On Day 1, the prosecution planned the first legal showing of People’s Exhibit 1—the so-called R. Kelly Sex Tape.
Assistant State’s Attorney Shauna Boliker set the scene. Boliker, a high-school homecoming queen who grew up to prosecute pervs and creeps, is known around the courthouse for her caffeinated sunniness. But her opening statement was a grim plea that strained her squeaky voice.
“It is Reshona Landfair and Robert Kelly that you will see on this videotape,” she said, naming the alleged victim, who the prosecution believed was 13 or 14 in the tape. “You will see the sex acts that he commanded Reshona Landfair to perform—vile and disturbing and disgusting acts. You will see that underage child performing acts that you have never seen before.”
At 35, Sam Adam Jr. was the youngest member of Kelly’s four-man defense team, but he was sent out for the opening statement—perhaps because his multiracial background might appeal to a jury of eight whites and four blacks. Rotund and bombastic, Sam Jr. performed like a man who supplemented his legal studies by watching Al Pacino in …
And Justice for All.
“Rrrrobert Kelly … is
not on that tape,” Sam Jr. declaimed. He showed the jury a booking photo of Kelly’s lower back. To the left of the spine was a mole the size of a crushed fly. “There’s a section in this tape where the man stands up and his back is illuminated,” Sam Jr. said. “There is no mole! That means one thing: It is not Robert, or he’s some kind of magician.
”Deputies dimmed the lights and drew the blinds, as though Courtroom 500 was about to see something best hidden from other courtrooms.
0:05—Scene: a wood-paneled basement with a hot tub.
0:11—The man alleged to be R. Kelly (hereafter Alleged Kelly) hands stack of bills to female alleged to be a teenager (hereafter Alleged Teen Girl). She mouths “thank you,” further expresses gratitude with fellatio.
4:11—Alleged Teen Girl stands on hot-tub cover, grinding hips to Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).” “Dance faster, then, baby,” Alleged Kelly moans.
5:20—Camera zooms on Alleged Teen Girl’s crotch. She pees on floor until Alleged Kelly orders, “Stop it.”
7:00—Alleged Kelly walks into picture, drops orange warm-up pants. Alleged Teen Girl straddles him.
11:33—Him: “Daddy fuck you?” Her: “Yes, Daddy.”
20:52—Alleged Kelly urinates in Alleged Girl’s mouth. Not enjoying the taste, she purses lips and squinches nose.
23:08—In gentlemanly gesture, Alleged Kelly wipes her breasts with a towel.
24:44—The money shot. Alleged Kelly ejaculates on Alleged Girl’s chest. Wipes off chest.
Imagine your minister preaching against child porn while a Traci Lords movie plays above the pulpit. That was the discomfort level. A bald spectator clenched his arms, reddening to the crown. A young woman crossed her legs, watching with a hard look of disgust. Kelly looked bored. If you believed the prosecution, he’d seen this one before.
During the lunch recess, Kelly walked out to the bathroom with his bodyguards. Girls in the hallway screeched and waved.
“Ladies, into the elevator,” a deputy ordered.
Jerhonda Johnson left the courtroom shaking her head.
“It ain’t him on that tape,” she said.
Another girl stared daggers at Johnson’s
SPECTATOR badge.
“Ooh, I’ll beat her up and take her pass,” she vowed.
The video was followed by Dan Everett, a retired Chicago police detective. Everett identified the girl as Reshona Landfair. When Boliker asked where he’d seen her before, the tongue-tied officer uttered a forbidden word: “investigation.”
In 2000, police began looking into reports that Kelly was having sex with Landfair. (Landfair refused to cooperate, which is why Kelly was on trial for child pornography—for making the tape itself—and not statutory rape.) But that was inadmissible, since it had nothing to do with the tape. Judge Vincent Gaughan, a crusty Vietnam War hero who ran his courtroom like an infantry platoon, sent the jury away and chewed out the red-faced detective.
“If you say it again, I’ll declare a mistrial,” he warned.
The jury never heard about the investigation. Nor did they hear about Kelly’s marriage to Aaliyah when she was 15, or the three underage girls who sued Kelly after alleged sexual relationships, or Kelly’s arrest on charges of possessing child pornography in Florida (the charges were eventually dropped). Their job was to answer one question: Were Robert and Reshona on that tape?
(Continue)