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The Prosecution Rests in R. Kelly Trial — But Where Is Jim DeRogatis?
Yesterday, after an exciting day of testimony about threesomes on R. Kelly’s in-home basketball court (how he managed to avoid writing a song about this, the world may never know), the prosecution rested its case in Kelly’s child-pornography trial. So, today begins the defense’s push to prove his innocence. Well, that was the plan, anyway.
Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis — who passed Kelly’s alleged sex tape to police after receiving it from an anonymous source in 2002 — is a no-show in court today, despite an order from the judge to arrive at 10 a.m. State lawyers, as well as ones for the Sun-Times, had fought hard to keep DeRogatis off the stand, invoking reporter’s privilege and arguing that forcing him to testify would violate his First Amendment rights. But the defense claims DeRogatis’s testimony could debunk that of a state witness (Stephanie “Sparkle†Edwards, who says she watched a copy of the tape with DeRogatis after he’d supposedly turned it over to police) or prove that DeRogatis’s “extreme bias†against Kelly “impelled the reporter to violate the law†by keeping an extra copy for himself.
Who’s right? We have no idea! But last week DeRogatis reviewed Usher’s new album, Here I Stand, under the headline “Usher replaces R. Kelly as king of R&B,†proving he’s at least a little biased because, man, that album is terrible!
The Kelly Chronicles [Chicago Sun-Times]
Usher replaces R. Kelly as king of R&B [Chicago Sun-Times]