Ride the Lightning

R. KELLY ACQUITED: BOTCHING THE EVIDENCE

June 16, 2008

On June 13th, hip-hop star R. Kelly was found innocent of child pornography charges which involved a DVD of an adult man having sex with a 14-year-old girl. Amid the circus that always accompanies such trials, it was striking to read about the blunders of the prosecution. Once again, we had evidence – in this case a DVD – that contained extraordinary evidence of a crime. Did the prosecution follow forensic protocol and make an exact copy of the DVD? Of course not. Instead, an inferior quality reproduction was given to defense counsel and represented as an exact copy, which caused an angry Judge Vincent Gaughan to label the DVD “the rotten tomato in the barrel.”

Somehow, the prosecution and defense came to some sort of agreement as to how this evidence would be treated, and that agreement was not disclosed publicly. The botched copy followed the inexplicable inability of the prosecution to explain where the DVD came from, and was then followed by a statement from the alleged victim that it was not her on the DVD. Some jurors acknowledged that they believed it was R. Kelly in the video, but overall, they did not find that the prosecution had met its burden of proof, a conclusion with which most commentators agreed.

I certainly do not know enough about the case to know whether R. Kelly was guilty – but this much is clear – a crime occurred – and if it was R. Kelly, a botched prosecution, including the mishandling of the electronic evidence, helped to set him free. The young woman on the DVD was victimized twice – once by the criminal and then again by a bumbling prosecution.

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