R. Kelly lawyers try to revive tattered defenses

Monday, June 9, 2008

R. Kelly tattered defensesR. Kelly's attorney guided his electric scooter down a hallway outside the courtroom where his client is on trial for child pornography, exclaiming as he sped past several reporters, "In the morning, we attack!"

That battle cry last week from Ed Genson, who suffers from a neurological disorder that makes it difficult for him to walk, was apt: After two weeks of prosecution testimony, the R&B star's lawyers have a lot of ground to regain.

After launching their defense days ago, Kelly's lawyers are endeavoring to breathe life back into several key claims when the case continues this week, including that a mole on Kelly's back proves his innocence and that a sex tape at the heart of the case could have been doctored, possibly as part of an extortion plot.

Kelly, who won a Grammy Award in 1997 for "I Believe I Can Fly," has pleaded not guilty to child pornography for allegedly videotaping himself having sex with a female prosecutors say was at young as 13. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

Defense attorneys say neither Kelly nor the alleged victim are on the videotape, pointing to what they said in opening arguments was the absence of a fingernail-sized mole on the man's back in sex tape. Kelly, they noted, has such a mole.

But the mole defense took a hit when a prosecution witness froze frames on the tape that showed a spot on a man's lower back — located in the same place as a mole on Kelly's back as it appears in 2002 police photos.

On Thursday, however, the defense played their own frame-by-frame footage of the man's back for jurors.

"Do you see a mole?" Kelly attorney Marc Martin asked defense witness Charles Palm.

"I see a black mark but it doesn't appear to be a mole," the video expert replied.

Palm also told jurors the spot appeared only intermittently — proof, he said, that it was likely a mere glitch on the tape.

Kelly, who at times appeared dejected as prosecutors presented their case, seemed more at ease as the defense got into the thick of their case, even occasionally nodding his head in agreement as witnesses spoke.

He seemed particularly buoyed by three relatives of the alleged victim who took the stand for the defense to say they didn't recognize her as the female on the graphic tape. Four relatives testified earlier for the prosecution to say it was her.

"It definitely wasn't her," one relative, Shonna Edwards, told jurors emphatically on Wednesday. Edwards said she saw the tape for the first time a few days before, saying the female's body in it was too developed to be her relative at the time.

Among the most surreal testimony of the trail to date came when Palm, the defense video expert, sought to counter testimony that doctoring the nearly half-hour video — 100,000 frames on the entire footage — would be practically impossible.

To demonstrate it was doable, he played an excerpt he digitally altered where just the heads of the man and woman disappeared as they had sex. At other points, their bodies fade in and out completely, as if they were ghosts.

"I created most of that over a couple of spare hours," he said. Asked in cross-examination if anything indicated the tape had actually been fabricated, Palm conceded, "Nothing jumps out at me at being obviously faked."

When they continue their case this week, Kelly's lawyers were expected to call a witness who came forward after the trial began to claim he could discredit Lisa Van Allen, the last witness for prosecutors before they rested their case Monday.

In her potentially damaging testimony, the 27-year-old told jurors she engaged in three-way sexual encounters with Kelly and the alleged victim on several occasions, including once on a basketball court.

She also described how Kelly allegedly carried a duffel bag stuffed full of homemade sex tapes. "Wherever he was at, the bag would follow him," she said.

The defense has already begun trying to impinge her potentially devastating testimony.

A law clerk for the defense, Jason Wallace, told jurors Wednesday that Van Allen's fiance sought $300,000 from Kelly in exchange for her silence. Van Allen also has admitted she once stole Kelly's $20,000 diamond-studded watch from a hotel.

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