Kelly’s one-time business manager has shared with a federal jury a wealth of information that appears to be valuable not only to himself, but also to his former boss.
Darrell McDavid mocked key prosecution witnesses. He insists he thinks the video of Kelly’s 2008 test center is fake. And when he remembers how the jury acquitted Kelly in that 2008 trial — McDavid was shocked when he reached what he thought was the right decision.
Then McDavid turns around. “I’ve learned a lot,” Kelly said of a new trial in Chicago federal court, now in its fourth week. He said he had never before seen the new jurors view the disturbing videos he had seen. And he said he had never heard some of the testimony they heard before.
“I’m ashamed to stand here today,” McDavid told jurors.
Then, in the early 2000s, he began to wrestle with his feelings again, telling his lawyer Bo Brindley that he wanted to trust Kelly because “I loved him and I believed in him.” He was a genius.”
That’s when Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, interrupted McDavid’s “theatrics.” “This is not theater, ma’am,” McDavid said, taking off his glasses and wiping away tears.
Still, the highlight of the marathon testimony was Kelly’s now co-defendant, who, along with the singer, is accused of illegally trying to derail Kelly’s 2008 child pornography trial.
Absent from McDavid’s testimony was additional context related to the late singer Aaliyah Houghton, whom Kelly married in 1994 when she was 15 and he was 27. Although McDavid said in the 2000s that he had no reason to believe Kelly sexually abused underage girls, Kelly’s testimony at a trial in New York last year showed that McDavid was involved in bribing a “welfare office” worker to get a fake ID for Aliyah so Kelly could marry her.
Aliyah died in a plane crash in 2001.
Prosecutors argued earlier Thursday that the door to Aliyah’s testimony was “left wide open by McDavid’s testimony.” U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber found Kelly too biased and ruled that they could not enter it.
Prosecutors are expected to cross-examine McDavid on Friday.
Kelly faces charges of child pornography, obstruction of justice and soliciting minors to engage in criminal sexual activity. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted in New York.
McDavid recalled the preparation and process surrounding Kelly’s 2008 trial before telling jurors he was “ashamed” of what he learned in the current Chicago trial. In the year That theory was floated by Kelly’s defense attorneys in 2008.
McDavid said Kelly’s criminal defense attorney at the time, Ed Jensen, showed him redacted CCTV footage during the 2008 trial, which showed Kelly sexually assaulting the 14-year-old. That tape is also at issue in Kelly’s current trial.
Kelly has a different mole on his back, McDavid told jurors. But in the video Jensen showed, McDavid said the molecule “jumped all over.” McDavid said the video “totally convinced him.”
McDavid said Kelly’s ex-girlfriend and longtime accuser Lisa Van Allen was caught “lying” when she testified in 2008. He alleged.
McDavid said he threatened to call a press conference unless Charles Freeman, another key witness in the current trial, was paid $100,000 in a 2008 trial. McDavid said he once told Freeman he was “a rotten piece of shit.”
The woman who appears in the video from the 2008 trial, known to current jurors as “Jane,” has denied for years that she was sexually assaulted by Kelly. Last month, the video was released for the first time during a 2008 trial in which she testified that Kelly sexually assaulted her.
McDavid told jurors he had never heard Jane make such a claim when Kelly was charged in the 2000s. Kelly said he had not seen two additional videos of Jane’s abuse that were viewed by the current jury. And the court said it had not heard the stories of three other victims, identified as “Paul”, “Tracy” and “Nia”.
“I learned a lot,” McDavid said.
“What I knew before this trial is what I knew then,” McDavid said.
