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A Jury Of Seven Men And Five Women Will Decide R. Kelly’s Fate

R. Kelly’s fate is now in a jury’s hands after weeks of lurid testimony in his sexual misconduct trial.

A jury of seven men and five women began deliberating racketeering and sex trafficking charges against the R&B superstar Friday.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their closing arguments this week. The 54-year-old singer is accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that recruited his accusers for unwanted sex and mental torment.

The witnesses said Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Kelly “believed the music, the fame and the celebrity meant he could do whatever he wanted,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Shihata said in federal court in Brooklyn in a fiery rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument that portrayed Kelly as a victim of false accusations.

But, she added, “He’s not a genius, he’s a criminal. A predator.” She added that his alleged victims “aren’t groupies or gold diggers. They’re human beings.”

After Shihata finished, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly started her final instructions for jurors, who later began deliberating.

In his closing, defense attorney Deveraux Cannick told the jury that testimony by several accusers was full of lies, and that “the government let them lie.”

Cannick argued there was no evidence Kelly’s accusers were never forced to do anything against their will.

Instead, Cannick said, Kelly’s girlfriends stuck around because he spoiled them with free air travel, shopping sprees and fancy dinners — treatment that belied the predator label.

“He gave them a lavish lifestyle,” he said. “That’s not what a predator is supposed to do.”