R.Kelly & His Legal Team Wanted To Prohibit White People From Serving On Jury Of Child Pornography Case In Chicago

“Kelly is an international celebrity in the music industry. Between 1996 and 2015, Kelly was nominated for over 250 music awards, including 26 Grammy Awards. Kelly has a fervent fanbase, including many individuals who actively use various social media platforms to share their opinions about Kelly and his ongoing criminal cases.”

R.Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison in July after being found guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering in September 2021. He was recently transferred from a prison in New York to one in Illinois, where he now faces charges of child pornography for allegedly filming the sex abuse of five women.

The disgraced singer and his legal team requested on August 15 that any potential jurors be excluded if they had watched any part of Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” docuseries. They claimed anyone who had watched any part of the film could not be impartial.

The judge also denied that request, which claimed that,

“any potential juror who has watched any portion of this docuseries must be disqualified for cause on whether they can be fair, too great a risk exists that such a juror would base their verdict on matters not introduced into evidence in the courtroom.”

Four white women, four black women, two white men and two Black men make up the jury’s final composition. The alternates include two Black women, two white women, and a white man.