Chicago Prepares for Trial of R. Kelly- nytimes.com
“This is a very weird case,” Mr. Cavise said. “It makes Chicago look like a laughingstock. It’s as if they said, ‘Let’s spend millions of dollars and six years, shut down an important courtroom, cause a media circus and end up either convicting him of nothing at all or on some charge that has nothing to do with what you really should get him on if he’s guilty: sex with children.’ ”
“A reporter for The Chicago Tribune had his trial press pass rescinded for two days after he quizzed a spectator in the empty courtroom.
He got off lightly. In December a woman in court on a charge of violating her probation snapped pictures of Mr. Kelly with her cellphone. The judge put her in jail for the weekend and had the phone destroyed. Last Friday he complained that reporters were sticking their gum underneath the benches. In what might have been a joke, he threatened to undertake DNA testing to discover the culprits.”
“’Either he’s absolutely demonic or stupid or crazy’, Mark Neal (professor of black popular culture at Duke University) concluded.” (on Kelly)
