After six weeks of harrowing testimony in R. Kelly's New York sex crimes trial, the jury is considering a raft of evidence intended to support a racketeering charge -- a unusual application of a law commonly viewed as a tool to nab mob bosses.
The prosecution says the 54-year-old singer led a criminal ring that enabled his alleged abuse of women and teens for decades. He also stands accused of eight violations of the Mann Act, an anti-sex trafficking law.
"There are uses of it that I had not foreseen," he said, referencing both street gangs and sex crime rings. On the list of alleged acts are bribery, child pornography, kidnapping, forced labor and sexual exploitation of a child.- 'Godfather' - "RICO is one of the best ways to extend" statutes of limitations, said Moe Fodeman, a trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor in New York, because though the statute has a five-year limitation, "it runs from the last act the defendant did in furtherance of the enterprise.
Kelly's former manager, for example, admitted to bribing a worker at a public aid office to obtain false identification for the late singer Aaliyah, so she could marry the singer when she was 15.- 'Enablers' - In the defense's closing arguments, attorney Deveraux Cannick urged doubt over whether Kelly's music business could have been doubling as a criminal outfit for decades.
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