Friday, March 8, 2019

R. Kelly was ‘guilty as hell,’ singer’s prominent lawyer from first trial says

Ed Genson


     R. Kelly is on television, saying he never did anything illegal with underage girls.
     “I didn’t do this stuff!” he told Gayle King on CBS. “This is not me!”
     Trying to reach over the head of the legal system and speak directly to those who might be in his jury pool.
     Which is his right, I suppose.
     But R. Kelly’s is not the only voice on the matter.
     There are the alleged victims. And the lawyers representing them. They will have their day in court.
     There is also the past. The 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse with four women he’s accused of now are not the first charges Kelly has faced. In 2008 he was acquitted of child pornography charges; that case was dragged out over six years by a defense team headed by Ed Genson, a well-known, even notorious Chicago criminal defense attorney.
     Genson is still around at 77, though ill, his usual candor honed by the approach of death.
     “I have bile duct cancer,” he said in the paneled study of his Deerfield home. “Terminal cancer.”
    Doctors gave him 90 days to live.
     “That was a year and a half ago,” said Genson. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”
     Perhaps this is a good moment to set the record straight.
     “I’ve been a lawyer 54 years,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent criminal cases. I’ve represented entertainers, represented people connected to organized crime, represented professional criminals. I’ve represented guilty people, I represent innocent people.”
     “I can say whatever I want, but we’ve got to do it fast,” he said. “It would be nice to get it down so somebody knows besides me.”
     His father was a bail bondsman, and we talked about the profession of posting bond in the 1950s. Then Genson brought up a certain former client.
     “When I represented Kelly in Florida, they set the bond at a $1 million,” he said. “We paid the bondsman $100,000. He was out on bond on the Florida case for three days and they made $100,000. Because he had to fly back to Chicago because they were going to arrest him here.”
     Any insights into R. Kelly, the man? Guilty as hell?
     “He was guilty as hell!” Genson said. “I don’t think he’s done anything inappropriate for years. I’ll tell you a secret: I had him go to a doctor to get shots, libido-killing shots. That’s why he didn’t get arrested for anything else.”

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7 comments:

  1. Omg. No. Attorney client privilege holds whether one is still a client or not. And it’s the clients privilege. The attorney volunteering is irrelevant. And the ongoing crime thing is only an exception of your client tells you he’s going to commit a crime, you can violate privilege to stop it. And Kelly has yet to testify so perjury isn’t in play. What he’s done is clearly improper and a violation of his duties. I guess cuz he’s dying he doesn’t care,but this is pretty terrible. And the fact that Kelly is likely guilty doesn’t make it any less an undermining of our judicial system.

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    1. Yeah, that popped out at me as poor legal analysis.

      That said, who is going to be after this dying attorney?

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  2. I'm glad this man is speaking up. It's an outrage that he was acquitted the last time. How many more had to suffer? Perhaps some will open their eyes now.

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  3. It may be pretty terrible per Annie above, but it was still quite a coup for Neil to get it IMO.

    I can see what Gerson is saying about clients found not guilty and thinking they're bulletproof. O.J. Simpson is the poster child for that.

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  4. R Kelly should have him disbarred ,to protect the attorney client relationship, and this doesn't become a trend.

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    1. I think R. Kelly has bigger fish to fry at the moment.

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  5. Stop the presses! Attorney violates privilege on deathbed, showing client to be slimier scum than all the ambulance chasers who run to protect rich offenders like OJ. I think the justice system can survive this particular injustice.

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