R. Kelly's lawyer has asked a judge to allow him to drop his client over a lawsuit where Kelly is accused of breaking up a marriage.
Full Answer
Oct 11, 2018 · R. Kelly's lawyer has asked a judge to allow him to drop his client over a lawsuit where Kelly is accused of breaking up a marriage. According to The Blast, Attorney M. Craig Robertson filed papers with the court stating that he feels he should be "allowed to discontinue any further legal services and/or representation of Defendants now and/or ...
Sep 23, 2021 · R. Kelly's lawyer has compared him to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr in the closing argument of the singer's sex-trafficking trial. Deveraux Cannick said both men held the government to ...
Sep 23, 2021 · R. Kelly's defense attorney made a strange closing argument in his sex trafficking trial on Thursday, comparing the disgraced R&B singer to Martin Luther King Jr. and former Vice President Mike Pence.. Kelly's lawyer Deveraux Cannick began the defense's closing argument in the New York sex trafficking trial by declaring that the singer is fighting for his constitutional …
Oct 01, 2021 · Published Sept. 30, 2021 Updated Oct. 20, 2021. Midway through the singer R. Kelly ’s trial in Brooklyn, during a sidebar conversation out of …
Sep 23, 2021 · The government, Cannick argued, allowed its witnesses to take the stand and lie in order to secure a guilty verdict. “Getting a conviction of R. Kelly is a big deal,” he said.
Net Worth: | -$2 Million |
---|---|
Age: | 47 |
Born: | January 8, 1967 |
Country of Origin: | United States of America |
Source of Wealth: | Professional Singer/Rapper |
Nine women and two men have appeared in court, saying R. Kelly sexually abused them.
Deveraux Cannick said both men held the government to account and he urged jurors to be courageous.
From start to finish, legal experts said, the defense focused on an ill-conceived plan to discredit Mr. Kelly’s accusers instead of attacking the underpinnings of the unusual racketeering charge he faced.
In Mr. Kelly’s case, five people testified for the defense. The prosecution called 45. Mr. Kelly, who also faces charges in Illinois and Minnesota, will be sentenced in May.
Ms. Penza called many of the defense’s cross-examinations of accusers “offensive” and said the defense had failed on a fundamental level.
Ms. Blank Becker declined to comment on the defense team’s strategy until after sentencing. Mr. Cannick did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
To be sure, Mr. Kelly’s defense team was facing an uphill battle. The singer, once one of the best-known recording artists in the world, had been trailed by sexual abuse accusations for decades. At trial, nine women and two men shared hours of graphic testimony about the physical, sexual and emotional abuse he inflicted that could not easily be explained away.
And while Mr. Cannick conducted aggressiv e cross-examinations of many of Mr . Kelly’s accusers, it was not clear how effective his questions were.
R. Kelly appears standing beside his attorney, Steven Greenberg, during a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse on September 17, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. Antonio Perez/Pool via Getty Images
Kelly apologized to a federal judge Wednesday "for the confusion" before she told him to stop talking.
When Donnelly asked Kelly whether he wished to terminate Greenberg and Leonard, he confirmed it.
In a letter to the judge this week, the lawyers, Steve Greenberg and Michael Leonard, wrote that they had significant reasons to depart the case, writing that it would be “impossible” for them to continue to represent Mr. Kelly.
During the hearing, one of the two lawyers who joined the case later, Nicole Becker, called those comments “inappropriate” on the whole. In a statement, she and the fourth lawyer, Thomas A. Farinella, said that the matter should have been moot: Mr. Kelly had already terminated the two others from the case last week, they said.
After a letter comes, she said, a decision would follow promptly. Mr. Kelly’s indictment, filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, accuses him of being the leader of a criminal enterprise that included his managers, bodyguards, drivers and members of his entourage. The enterprise recruited women and underage girls for illegal sexual contact ...
The enterprise recruited women and underage girls for illegal sexual contact and then isolated and threatened them to keep them under control and prevent them from going to the authorities, the indictment alleges.
Kelly’s legal representation is the latest twist in the run-up to the singer’s long-awaited trial on racketeering charges, which is scheduled to begin on Aug. 9 in New York. Mr. Kelly said at the hearing that he was in support of the change.
Mr. Greenberg had represented Mr. Kelly, 54, since 2018, before he was charged in the criminal case. But both he and Mr. Leonard said their joint departure was spurred by agitation with two other lawyers on the case, who they said lack trial experience at the federal level and began to demand a larger, more forward-facing role in the trial.
Ms. Becker and Mr. Farinella did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment after the hearing.
Kelly is currently in jail in Chicago for failure to pay delinquent child support to his ex-wife, and is trying to get more than $161,000 together.
Ed Genson, a famous Chicago defense attorney who says he's dying of cancer, might be in trouble for violating legal ethics rules, which say attorney-client privilege is sacrosanct and permanent unless the client lifts it. No doubt Kelly would not be thrilled that his ex-defense lawyer is commenting on his guilt.