R. Kelly found guilty on racketeering, sex trafficking charges, faces lengthy jail time – National | Globalnews.ca

Disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly was convicted Monday in a sex trafficking trial after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for numerous allegations of misconduct with young women and children.

The jury found Kelly guilty of racketeering on their second day of deliberations. He faces a sentence of 10 years to potentially life in prison.

Kelly sat absolutely still and silent as the foreperson gave the jury’s verdict to Judge Ann Donnelly.

The charges were based on an argument that the entourage of managers and aides who helped the singer meet girls — and keep them obedient and quiet — amounted to a criminal enterprise.

The jury of seven men and five women got the case Friday afternoon, and a couple hours into the deliberations, they sent the judge a note asking to review a transcript of testimony and evidence regarding a woman who claimed Kelly sexually assaulted her in 2003 when she was a 21-year-old radio station intern.

She testified she was kept locked up in a recording studio for days and drugged before the assault.

The 54-year-old singer is accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that recruited his accusers for unwanted sex and mental torment.

The witnesses said Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Several accusers testified in lurid detail during the trial, alleging that Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage.

Kelly was also convicted of criminal counts accusing him of violating the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to take anyone across state lines “for any immoral purpose.”

Kelly lawyer Deveraux Cannick said he was disappointed by the verdict. “I think I’m even more disappointed the government brought the case in the first place given all the inconsistencies,” Cannick said.

Kelly “believed the music, the fame and the celebrity meant he could do whatever he wanted,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Shihata said in federal court in a fiery rebuttal to the defence’s closing argument that portrayed Kelly as a victim of false accusations.

“He’s not a genius, he’s a criminal,” she said. “A predator.”

She added that his alleged victims “aren’t groupies or gold diggers. They’re human beings.”

The 54-year-old Kelly, perhaps best known for the 1996 smash hit I Believe I Can Fly, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges accusing him of abusing women, girls and boys for more than two decades.

He is also charged with multiple violations of the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines “for any immoral purpose.”

Prosecutors say their evidence proves how Kelly, with the help of some loyal members of his entourage, used tactics from “the predator playbook” to sexually exploit his victims.

The tactics included isolating them in hotel rooms or his recording studio, subjecting them to degrading rules like making them call him “Daddy” and shooting video recordings – some seen by the jury at trial – of them having sex with him and others as a means to control them, prosecutors said.

In his closing, defense attorney Deveraux Cannick told the jury that testimony by several accusers was full of lies, and that “the government let them lie.”

Cannick argued there was no evidence Kelly’s accusers were ever forced to do anything against their will. Instead, Cannick said, Kelly’s girlfriends stuck around because he spoiled them with free air travel, shopping sprees and fancy dinners – treatment that belied the predator label.

“He gave them a lavish lifestyle,” he said. “That’s not what a predator is supposed to do.”

On top of awaiting sentencing in the New York case, Kelly faces a second federal trial in Illinois on charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice.