by Viktoria Carrella

Created on: June 13, 2008

R. Kelly, a grammy award winning singer, recently faced 15 years in prison after being charged with 14 counts of child pornography. Today, Friday June 13, 2008, R. Kelly was found not guilty. The jury only deliberated for just under an hour before coming back with a not guilty verdict on all 14 counts.

This month long trial was based around a 27 minute video tape. The star witness for the prosecution was a woman who stated she had been involved in the tape along with R. Kelly and another female who at the time was 13 years old. The 13 year old who was allegedly in the tape is now 23 years old and denies ever being in the video or having any sexual relationships with R. Kelly. Neither R. Kelly or the then 13 year old female choose to testify at the trial.

Hours of testimony were spent on discussing whether or not the man in the video had a quarter size mole on his back or not. R. Kelly has a mole that is about the size of a quarter on his back while his four defense attorneys argued that the man in the video has no such mole.

During cross examination Lisa Van Allen, the woman making the accusations, became very upset and cried saying she had been involved in several different sexual occurrences between R. Kelly and then the 13 year old female. She was slightly discredited when she openly admitted she has stole a diamond watch from the hotel suite of R. Kelly worth over $20,000. This was one of the many loops that R. Kelly's defense used to show the jurors that he was innocent and that Lisa Van Allen was only trying to get money out of R. Kelly, which is what was thought to be the entire motive behind the accusations in the first place.

So what is in store for R. Kelly now that this issue is over? Despite all of this he has continued to have an amazing career. He has releases almost a dozen albums and is scheduled to release a new album in July of this year. It seems that R. Kelly can still fly and he is only going to keep soaring onwards and upwards from here. So be on the look out for new albums, tour dates and grammy nominations because this is one rapper who ia not about to be held down by a few criminal charges and a long awaited court trial that seemed to drag on forever. Hopefully next time we see R. Kelly on the televison screen or hear his name on the radio it will be because of something great he's done and not anything to do with children and porn.

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