R. Kelly seized his opportunity early, dropping out of high school to concentrate on his music career.
Attorney Mike Roman's chance for musical fame came later in life, this morning in room 500 of the Cook County criminal courts. Spotting that Judge Gaughan, Kelly's attorneys and the prosecutors were all in the judge's chambers, leaving Kelly alone in the courtroom with a handful of reporters, Roman pounced.
Bravely ignoring — or blissfully unaware of — Judge Gaughan's strict rules against anyone uninvolved in the case speaking with Kelly, Roman walked over to the star as he sat unguarded at the defense's table.
Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis must testify for the defense in R. Kelly's child porn trial, Judge Vincent Gaughan ruled this morning.
DeRogatis passed the notorious sex tape at the center of the case to police for investigation in 2002, and Kelly's attorneys say it is "crucial" to the singer's defense that DeRogatis testify.
Sun-Times attorney Damon Dunn argued Friday morning that DeRogatis should be protected from testifying by the Illinois reporter's privilege and the First Amendment. Kelly's attorneys were attempting to create a "chilling effect" against reporters covering Kelly by bringing DeRogatis in to testify, he said.
Anything DeRogatis could say in court would be "irrelevant" to Kelly's defense, he added.
But Gaughan sided with Kelly's attorney Marc Martin, saying that the reporter's privilege only protects journalists from identifying their sources. Gaughan said he would not allow Kelly's team to question DeRogatis about his sources, or to ask him how he got the tape, or to ask DeRogatis if he made a copy of the tape. "He will have to testify," Gaughan concluded.
Pitted against each other as witnesses, Lisa Van Allen and Damon Pryor share a past — and a child.
Van Allen, 27, is the prosecution’s star witness who is expected testify she had a three-way sexual encounter with R. Kelly and the underage girl who allegedly appears in a sex video with the singer.
Van Allen, who lives in the Atlanta area, at one time possessed another sex videotape featuring Kelly, sources previously told the Sun-Times. A Kelly aide paid her to get it back, sources said. The tape showed Van Allen, the underage girl, and Kelly engaged in sex acts, a source said.
With Van Allen’s testimony expected this week, the defense revealed Wednesday it had a new witness — Pryor — who could undermine her credibility.
The woman who had been scheduled to testify this week that she had a sexual threesome with R. Kelly and an underage girl will not testify today.
The prosecution is currently questioning its last witness of the day, forensic video analyst Grant Fredericks. Meanwhile, the woman is catching a flight back to Atlanta, according to a source close to the situation. She is planning to return to Chicago on Sunday and might testify on Monday.
The same source also described defense surprise witness Damon Pryor as a former boyfriend of the woman, a single mother from the Atlanta area. "He's just looking for his 15 minutes of fame," the source said.
Damon Pryor -- the mystery witness dramatically flown in from out of state last night by R. Kelly's attorneys -- has refused to give his social security number to the prosecution, further delaying the testimony of a potentially crucial state's witness.
Defense attorneys hope the mystery witness can cast doubt on the story of an Atlanta woman, due to testify today that she participated in three-way sex with Kelly and the alleged victim in this case.
The Atlanta woman's evidence could be crucial, since no other prosecution witness is expected to testify that they actually saw Kelly and the girl have sex first-hand.
She's also expected to testify that Kelly's aides attempted to pay her off to keep her from testifying.
Kelly's attorneys have battled for nearly two months to keep her from testifying and to limit what she can testify to if she does take the stand. Twice already this week she has been due to testify, only to see her testimony delayed by defense motions.
The mystery witness who could undermine her was quizzed by Kelly's attorneys last night, but prosecutor Robert Heilingoetter this morning told Judge Gaughan that he needed more time to finish questioning the man. The mystery witness had refused to give prosecutors his social security number Heilingoetter said. Without it, the state can't confirm that he is who he says he is.
Judge Gaughan told Heilingoetter, "If he doesn't give you his social security number, he's going to be in major trouble. All right?"
The problems with the mystery witness mean the Atlanta woman will not testify until this afternoon, at the earliest. A detective and an FBI agent are set to testify this morning, instead.
Jacques Conway, who testified Wednesday, has the sort of resume prosecutors probably wish all their witnesses had: Methodist pastor, retired police sergeant, president of the Oak Park and River Forest School Board.
Yet Conway committed a gaffe that caused an awkward moment — he described defense lawyer Sam Adam Jr. as a "white male."
Adam Jr. is, by his own description, half black. Yet when prosecutor Robert Heilingoetter asked Conway to pick out R. Kelly in the courtroom, Conway said the singer was "the African-American male between two white males."
Kelly was seated between Adam Jr. and defense lawyer Ed Genson at the time.
The Post-Tribune previously revealed that the lead prosecutor pursuing R. Kelly was a high school homecoming queen and a pom-pom girl. Now we have the pictures to prove it!
Here Shauna Boliker is being crowned Homecoming Queen for 1977 at Andrean High School in Merrillville, Indiana. Luckily, Boliker's fellow prosecutor Robert Heilingoetter has better taste in suits than her hirsute King.
And click here to see Boliker star again in the 1977 Andrean yearbook as she captains the school's "Ninerettes" troupe.
A fuller account of Boliker's achievements in the intervening three decades is contained in this article.
Testimony ended abruptly in the R. Kelly child pornography trial Wednesday — because of a last-minute defense witness who could undermine the testimony of a woman who allegedly had a threesome with Kelly and an underage girl.
The prosecution witness, a single mother from Atlanta, had been scheduled to testify this afternoon. But at about 1 p.m., Judge Vincent Gaughan adjourned the proceedings for the day.
Gaughan told the courtroom, out of the jurors’ presence, that defense lawyer Sam Adam Sr. informed him that morning of a new witness — not previously on the defense’s witness list — who had just come to light.
“I have no idea what’s going on. But it might be impeachment of this witness” scheduled for this afternoon, Gaughan said, apparently referring to the Atlanta woman.
The alleged victim's high school basketball coach identified her as the girl on the tape at the center of the case this morning.
Jacques Conway, a retired Oak Park Police Sergeant, and an ordained United Methodist pastor, was the final state's witness for the day. As a police officer, he was attached to Oak Park River High School as a "resource officer," he said, adding that he also coached basketball at the school
Conway testified that he had bought a DVD copy of the infamous sex tape near the intersection of Madison and Pulaski in Oak Park and had inventoried it as evidence.
He said he had watched the tape and had identified the alleged victim by "her facial features, her size and the cross she was wearing," estimating she was 14 or 15 years old in the tape.
Former Percy Julian Middle School Spanish teacher Joel Rhea became the 13th state's witness to identify the alleged victim from the tape at the center of the case this morning.
Rhea, wearing a black shirt and gray suit, testified that he had coached the Percy Julian girls basketball team while the alleged victim played for Percy Julian's Oak Park rival, Emerson Middle School.
The alleged victim was close friends with players on the Percy Julian team, including Audrey Hampton and Simha Jamison, he said, adding that he had met the alleged victim "seven or eight times" while she was in the seventh grade.
He said he could identify the alleged victim as being on the tape by "the facial features, the forehead and the smile," and estimated she was 14 or 15 on the tape.
The alleged victims friends teased her about her "big forehead," he said.
Adding fuel to the argument that the R&B superstar views his current legal battle in part as one more opportunity to hype his new music, Kelly has leaked a second song from "12 Play: Fourth Quarter," scheduled for release in July. The title, appropriately enough: "Freak Show."
Former Kelly assistant Lindsey Perryman testified this afternoon that she first met the girl allegedly shown in the sex video in 1999 at a Chicago recording studio. The girl showed up at the studio with her parents and little brother -- and "had a pillow and overnight bag with her," Perryman said.
Perryman, who worked on and off for Kelly from 1999 to 2006, said the girl in the videotape is the same girl prosecutor claim it is. She also identified the man in the sex tape as Kelly.
Two more witnesses identified the alleged victim and R. Kelly as being on the tape at the center of the case this morning.
Raven Gengler, a school friend who played basketball with the alleged victim, and Tjada Burnett, a friend of the alleged victim's family, became the ninth and tenth prosecution witnesses to make those claims.
Burnett described the alleged victim's haircut in the tape as a "bob." Other witnesses have described it as a mullet.
But perhaps the most memorable moment this morning came when prosecutors showed the jury photos from inside Kelly's former home, providing us with an MTV Cribs-style look at the star's tastes in home decor.
Author Earl Ofari Hutchinson, in a column at The Daily Voice, suspects R. Kelly has a financial backup plan in case of a conviction: "Here's a bet. Accused child pornographer and sexual panderer R. Kelly has three albums in the can ready for release. If Kelly is convicted of the multiple counts slapped against him in his Chicago trial, the albums will fly out the can fast and even faster off the store racks. Kelly's well documented penchant for underage teens, and his boasts and taunts in his songs, topped by the very real possibility that he had sex on the homemade, smutty videotape with a very underage teen, mean little to his legions of devoted fans."
His first claim may not be off the mark. Sun-Times pop music critic Jim DeRogatis has noted before that nearly every time the Kelly trial seemed about to start during the last five years, the incredibly prolific R&B star has released new music. Before jury selection began this month, radio picked up his now ubiquitous new single "Hair-Braider" (listen).
But the second claim is more slippery: Can we claim that people who buy his records are truly indifferent to Kelly's alleged crimes? Perhaps many are simply uninformed — or, more likely, maybe an artist's personal woes just don't trump good music (subjective, I know). Granted, the O.J. Simpson book didn't exactly fly off the shelves, but Michael Jackson's income only started dipping when his albums started sucking, not as an immediate result of his own child sex trial.
A week into R. Kelly's trial, there are already dozens of talking points for bloggers to mull.
Judge Gaughan's decision to jail Debra Triplett for allegedly yelling "Free R. Kelly!" has already attracted reader comments here on the Kelly Chronicles. Now Perez Hilton thinks Kelly should pay Triplett's legal fees.
Over at chicagoist, Marcus Gilmer has been comparing R. Kelly to Drew Peterson. Here's one difference Gilmer missed: Peterson hasn't released an R & B album. Yet.
Andy Grimm of the Post-Tribune has been looking into the background of hard-working prosecutor Shauna Boliker, and he's discovered she was a pom-pom girl and homecoming queen.
The name of lawyer Buddy Meyers has come up repeatedly during testimony in the R. Kelly trial.
On Thursday, R&B singer Stephanie "Sparkle" Edwards said Meyers called her in late 2001 to tell her about the videotape that allegedly showed an underage relative of hers having sex with Kelly. Meyers sent an assistant to Edwards' residence to show her the tape, she testified.
Defense lawyers have repeatedly suggested Edwards and other family members were out to extract money or revenge — or both — from Kelly. That's why they involved Meyers, a personal injury lawyer, according to Kelly's lawyers.
The Sun-Times called Meyers for comment on Thursday, and he said he was "not directly" involved in the case. Asked to elaborate, the lawyer declined to comment further.
R. Kelly's attorneys are trying to have witnesses for the prosecution charged with crimes, it emerged in court this morning as the defense continued its pursuit of Sun-Times reporter Jim DeRogatis.
The jury has the day off but Judge Gaughan spent much of this morning in a secret hearing with both sides after prosecutor Shauna Boliker revealed that Kelly's attorneys have asked that state's witnesses be charged.
Boliker did not say which witnesses the defense wants charged, or with what, but Kelly's team has repeatedly questioned this week why witnesses who had seen the sex tape at the center of the case did not contact police sooner.
The defense has also suggested several times that anyone who possessed a copy of the tape committed the crime of child pornography, including DeRogatis.
The defense may be seeking to have that witness charged with child pornography, but until the judge unseals the defense's motion, there's no way of knowing.
Finally, it was only a matter of time before Second City Cop weighed in on the Kelly trial. With his readers' help, he's been coming up with more Johnny Cochrane-style catchphrases for the defense. None are safe for a family newspaper's website, so you'll just have to click here to read them.
