NEW YORK TIMES: CHICAGO — It took more than six years for prosecutors to get the R&B star R. Kelly into court on charges of child pornography. It only took a few hours for a jury to declare him not guilty on all 14 counts. Mr. Kelly had been accused of making a 27-minute sex tape with an under-age female. But a high-powered defense team convinced the jury of nine men and three women that the identity of the girl was not conclusive. As the verdicts were being read on Friday, the singer started crying and whispering “Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus,” over and over again, his lawyers said. Mr. Kelly, 41, whose signature song is “I Believe I Can Fly,” saluted a crowd of his fans as he left court and then put his hand on his heart. He made no remarks, but the impassive face he had worn during the four-week trial showed a flicker of a smile. MORE
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RELATED: By the end of the day, at the end of a two-week federal obscenity trial, a jury would decide that freedom of speech does not apply to Max Hardcore, that the average resident in the middle district of Florida would find his pornography obscene, worthless and illegal. The jury would convict him and his company on 20 obscenity counts, and require him to forfeit his three most popular domain names and face as many as 50 years in prison. The jury would make him shed tears. The jury never heard him talk…For close to eight hours during the trial, Hardcore, wearing a pinstripe suit and an American flag lapel pin, had sat in the polished, dark-wood sterility of federal courtroom 14A, as strangers watched him have sex on a giant screen. They squirmed, diverted their eyes, shifted in their chairs. “I’m thinking, ‘This is so surreal,’ ” Hardcore, whose real name is Paul F. Little, says during a break. “This is so surreally stupid.” MORE
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