bboy87 said:

people, we do not read everything...if you want something done you need to use the "report to mod" function.

why you all are insinuating their is a bias on sticky's when you don't even f*ckin report it, is frustrating.

bboy87 said:

people, we do not read everything...if you want something done you need to use the "report to mod" function.

why you all are insinuating their is a bias on sticky's when you don't even f*ckin report it, is frustrating.

sosgemini said:

me and Timmy were joking

bboy87 said:

It's all good. I didn't mind but of course if people didn't know about the trial, of course one of us would've probably be like 'hey can you make this a sticky?' so it really didn't cross my mind.

Timmy84 said:

Is this not the trial of this century? Isn't the whole world watching to see R. Kelly pay for his sins and crappy music? There are few things more important... China, the Democratic race, Al-Qaida and this. Prioritie people.





I totally kid.

Timmy84 said:

Is this not the trial of this century? Isn't the whole world watching to see R. Kelly pay for his sins and crappy music? There are few things more important... China, the Democratic race, Al-Qaida and this. Prioritie people.





I totally kid.

JackieBlue said:

I don't know about them muthafukkas but I'm watchin'!

I got the conviction party booked and ERRTHANG

Timmy84 said:

Is this not the trial of this century? Isn't the whole world watching to see R. Kelly pay for his sins and crappy music? There are few things more important... China, the Democratic race, Al-Qaida and this. Prioritie people.





I totally kid.

It's a shame I rely on the Org for my updates. :lol:So Shonna saw the tape and doesn’t think that’s R. Kelly? From what I heard, Stevie could tell it was R. Kelly.

JackieBlue said:

She's only saying it because she just saw it one time and think she knows what she's talking about. I'm sure there'll be more to say this but we don't know from whom.

Timmy84 said:

"Kelly's lawyers have suggested the videotape was doctored -- part of a scheme to extort money from the singer. Kelly defense lawyer Marc Martin asked DeRogatis whether he made "any changes or alterations" to the tape, or if he had any copies.

Each time, DeRogatis declined to answer, invoking his rights."

Don't know much about US law but this is a very strange question to not answer it is the question that would have sent RK down, but yet DeRogatis does not want to answer it? I think money is at the root of this trial RK is as doggey as MJ and half a dozen Pop/Music Stars out their Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis etc..but the trial is less to do with the child's rights and seem more to do with who's gonna get the money?

So supposedly—which I’m not surprised by—Kelly has lots of these sorts of tapes? This is the only one they could get their hands on?

Woman testifies to tryst with R. Kelly, alleged victim

CHICAGO - Prosecutors rested their case in the R. Kelly child pornography trial after a day of sometimes sensational testimony about alleged trysts, extortion plots and a duffel bag full of sex tapes.

Star prosecution Lisa Van Allen cried on the witness stand, pausing to regain her composure, as she described several alleged three-way sexual encounters with the R&B star and the alleged victim, some of which she claimed Kelly videotaped.

The 27-year-old Van Allen also told jurors in more than three hours of testimony Monday that Kelly last year offered her $250,000 to recover a tape of one of the trysts.

During cross examination, a defense attorney grilled Van Allen, accusing her of plotting to extort money from the singer, which she denied. Under further questioning she admitted she once stole Kelly's $20,000 diamond-studded watch from a hotel.

"Van Allen is an admitted thief and liar who wouldn't know the truth if she tripped over it," Kelly's business manager, Derrel McDavid, said in a statement.

Kelly, 41, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of child pornography for allegedly videotaping himself having sex with a female prosecutors say was as young as 13. He's pleaded not guilty and both he and the alleged victim, now 23, deny being on the video -- which is separate from those Van Allen testified to being on.

The state, which called more than a dozen witnesses over two weeks, rested its case following Van Allen's testimony. Jurors will get Tuesday off before the defense begins its presentation on Wednesday.

Van Allen told jurors Monday she first had sex with Kelly and the alleged victim in 1998. Kelly would have been around 30 years old at the time, Van Allen about 18 and the alleged victim would have been 14, according to prosecutors' estimates.

Kelly told her at the time that the alleged victim was 16, Van Allen said. The age of legal consent in Illinois is 17.

The three-way sex took place in the same North Side Chicago home where prosecutors say the sex tape at the center of the case also was made, Allen told jurors.

Van Allen said she began crying during a second sexual encounter in 1999 with Kelly and the alleged victim, prompting an upset Kelly to pick up the video camera and leave the room. She said that encounter took place at the Chicago house's basketball court.

"I started crying ... because I didn't want to do it," Van Allen testified. She said Kelly complained that her crying ruined the footage and that he never kept tapes when she cried.

A final three-way encounter took place in a trailer during a video shoot in Chicago in 2000, Van Allen said. When someone came to the trailer door, the alleged victim "had to run into the bathroom naked" because Kelly did not want others to see her there, she told jurors.

Several months pregnant, Van Allen, from Georgia, initially appeared relaxed on the witness stand and smiled frequently. But she wept when she discussed the second alleged encounter -- prosecutors pausing for two minutes as she dabbed tears from her face with a tissue.

Kelly looked on from across the room as Van Allen testified, at least once appearing to shake his head and other times leaning into the defense table, staring at his folded hands.

Van Allen told jurors that Kelly offered her $250,000 last year to recover a tape of one of the encounters with the alleged victim. She said acquaintances of hers brought the tape from Kansas City to a Chicago hotel, where it was handed over to a Kelly associate who paid her $20,000 in cash.

Van Allen portrayed Kelly as someone obsessed with videotaping his sexual exploits, testifying that he even carried around a duffel bag with his homemade sex tapes in it.

"He carried it everywhere with him," she said. "Wherever he was at, the bag would follow him."

Van Allen said she first met Kelly at the making of a music video in Georgia about 10 years ago. She later appeared in several Kelly music videos, including one for the song "I Wish," in which she braids the singer's hair.

During a 1998 Kelly concert tour, Van Allen said she simulated having sex with the singer in front of the audience.

"You didn't cry then, did you?" asked defense attorney Sam Adam Sr., who repeatedly suggested Van Allen's tears in court on Monday were disingenuous.

Before Van Allen took the stand, Judge Vincent Gaughan advised that she had been appointed an attorney, saying some of her testimony might be "self-incriminating." She was granted sweeping immunity by prosecutors for her testimony.

Van Allen said she only approached prosecutors about testifying in the case several months ago -- six years after Kelly was charged.

"It's the right thing to do," she told jurors.

But Adam said Van Allen had ulterior motives when she contacted prosecutors in March, including to help get a reduced sentence in a weapons case for a man she lives with.

Adam also noted that Van Allen only told prosecutors on Monday that she stole Kelly's watch in 2001.

"So the spirit didn't move you to do the right thing about this (the watch) until today?" Adam asked.

Adam pointed across the courtroom at Kelly. "You tried to extort that man over there," he said.

Van Allen denied the extortion accusation, saying Kelly asked her in 2007 if she could hand over the tape of one of their three-way encounters.

Asked whether she knew if there are any copies of that alleged tape, Van Allen gestured at Kelly across the room, referring to him by his birth name.

"Robert would know," she said.

And some fools are STILL defending this muthafucka.
[Edited 6/5/08 11:02am]

Defense paints witness as profit-seeker with tendency for criminal boyfriends

Defense attorney Sam Adam Sr. painted prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen as a schemer with a penchant for shady boyfriends whose fiance pulled the strings in a plan to extort money from R. Kelly.

Adam asked Van Allen, 27, who had said earlier that she came forward because it was "the right thing to do" why she didn't do so much earlier, like in 2002 when Kelly was first charged.

"I was young," Van Allen said. "You were younger yesterday, that's not the question," Adam responded. (See, this about when I'da came across the bench and hit that mofo in his damn mouf. )

Van Allen went on to say that she had just given birth to her daughter and had no interest in getting involved with a high-profile legal case.

The questioning then turned to Van Allen's skills in choosing a mate. Turns out both her former boyfriend, defense witness Damon Pryor, and her fiance, Yul Brown, were convicted on federal fraud charges.

"What, do you have some thing where guys have to have some federal fraud charge before you are interested in them?" Adam quipped.

Many in the courtroom, including Van Allen, laughed. "I see you laughing, is that funny?" Adam asked. "No," Van Allen responded.

Adam went on to ask Van Allen whether she told Pryor, a defense witness, that the sex tape at the heart of the case was part of a scheme with two associates to extort money from Kelly. Her part in the plan, Adam said, was to go to Kelly and arrange for payment. Van Allen denied the allegations.

Van Allen also denied approaching Kelly in July 2007 to get money for a tape purported to show her, Kelly and the alleged victim having sex. She said Kelly offered her $250,000 to help him "recover" the tape. She testified that she arranged for Kelly to get the tape but was only paid $20,000.

Later, Adam asked Van Allen about the February arrest of Brown on gun and drug charges. Brown, who Adam said faced 22 years in prison, pleaded guilty and received probation shortly after arranging for Van Allen to come forward to testify against Kelly.

Adam went on to accuse Van Allen and Brown of trying to extort money from his son, attorney Sam Adam Jr., who traveled to Atlanta to interview her upon learning that she was planning to testify for the prosecution.

Adam asked Van Allen whether Brown said, "Kelly has three options to rectify this situation so Lisa would not have to go to the authorities," adding that she had a $300,000 offer for a book deal. Van Allen denied the accusations.

Van Allen went on to say that she knew nothing of accusations that Brown tried to broker a deal with Adam Jr., saying that "Kelly knows what he has to do to make this right."

After the cross examination, the prosecutor rested its case. The defense is expected to start giving its case Wednesday. On Tuesday, Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis--who provided the police with the sex tape at the heart of the case--is expected to be questioned by Kelly's attorneys.

After several delays, including a brief one this morning, the prosecution's key witness gave explosive testimony Monday.
The prosecution's key witness in the trial of singer R. Kelly on child pornography charges told jurors about three sexual encounters she had with Kelly and the alleged victim in the case.

In just under one hour of testimony, Lisa Van Allen, 27, also identified Kelly and the alleged victim on the videotape that is the central piece of evidence in the trial.

Van Allen, who was 17 when she first met Kelly, testified to a sexual encounter with the underage girl in 1998, 1999 and in 2000. Two of those encounters were videotaped, she said, though neither tape is the one at the center of the prosecution's case.

Van Allen, now engaged and the mother of a 5-year-old-girl, first met Kelly at the video shoot for "Home Alone" in late 1997 or early 1998, where after a brief introduction the two engaged in sexual intercourse, she testified in court today.

After exchanging phone numbers, Van Allen, of Georgia, started flying to Chicago to visit the recording artist, dividing her time between a hotel room paid for by Kelly and the studio where he recorded his music. By the summer of 1998, the 17-year-old quit her job in Georgia and moved to Chicago to be with Kelly, she testified.

She attended his performances and went on tour with him, in addition to occasional outings to the mall for shopping, she said.

Then in late 1998, Van Allen testified she met the alleged victim. Their first encounter was sexual, she said, and took place with Kelly in the log-cabin themed room of his former home in Chicago.

The singer videotaped the encounter, she said.

"He had a stand, and he set it up ... and directed it toward where we were," she said under direct examination from the prosecution. "[He] told us where to sit and basically what to do."

After the first encounter, she occasionally saw the alleged victim at Kelly's music studio, Van Allen said. Then a year later, she said, they all met up again at the singer's house, where the three engaged in intercourse on a black futon set up on the singer's basketball court.

Van Allen said Kelly again set up a video camera and pointed it at the mattress. But this time, Van Allen started crying, she testified.

"I didn't want to do it," she explained in court. "[Kelly] stopped everything and put up the camera and we left."

The last encounter between the three took place in 2000 in Kelly's trailer at the video shoot for "A Woman's Threat" in Chicago, she testified.

She said Kelly recorded the encounter, as well, though it was interrupted when someone came knocking on the trailer door.

"[The alleged victim] had to run into the bathroom naked" because Kelly did not want her to be seen, Van Allen said.

The prosecution made clear that neither this tape nor the other recordings she testified about were the tape shown to jurors during the trial.

Van Allen said she had never seen that tape before prosecutors showed it to her last week. But her identification of the participants in the video was unequivocal: the alleged victim and Kelly.

She said the tape was probably made in 1998, the same year she was first filmed with the alleged victim and Kelly, because "they both looked exactly the same way."

Van Allen added that she recognized the room where the encounter between the alleged victim and Kelly took place as the log cabin-themed room. Van Allen testified that Kelly kept all of his tapes with him at all times and put them in a black duffel bag.

"If he was in the studio, it was in the studio with him. If he went to Hoops [basketball court], it went to Hoops with him," she said. "The bag would follow him."

Van Allen testified that in 2001, she left Kelly and returned to Georgia. She maintained contact with the singer, though, and he visited her in Atlanta.

During one visit, she testified, she stole his Rolex watch.

Defense attorneys had previously mentioned the theft, and they are likely to hammer away at her during cross-examination. The defense is expected to attack her credibility as a witness, citing her theft and other charges leveled against her.

As for her reasoning for coming forward: "It was the right thing to do." She was also given state and federal immunity for testifying in the case, Van Allen said.

The defense is likely to question her motivation, given that she waited several years after the indictment was announced before coming forward.

Van Allen admitted on the witness stand that she had been in jail for a month after a fight with another woman when she was 19. She also acknowledged she spent two days in jail for a domestic battery charge in 2006 after finding her boyfriend with another woman.

Kelly's attorneys are expected to accuse her of offering to switch her testimony for a price. The defense team has described it as an extortion attempt, and unsuccessfully petitioned Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan to compel the prosecution to file criminal charges against her.

The defense reminds me of the Law & Order prosecutors.

I agree, Graycap, but they ARE trying. IMHO, if they don't bring the girl, they won't win their case either:

Kelly defense continues efforts to discredit IDs

1 hour ago

CHICAGO (AP) — R. Kelly's attorneys continue to try to cast doubt on prosecution witnesses who say they know the alleged victim at the center of the R&B singer's child pornography trial.

The 41-year-old Kelly has pleaded not guilty to charges that he made a videotape of himself having sex with an underage girl. Both Kelly and the alleged victim deny they're on the tape.

Prosecutors had called more than a dozen witnesses who said they recognized the alleged victim on the tape.

But the defense team is calling several witnesses who question those identifications.

Several defense investigators told jurors at least one relative who identified the alleged victim for the prosecution had told them she wasn't sure her relative was on the videotape.

Timmy84 said:

I hope these jurors have common sense. This is an open and shut type of case. It really is.