Coming soon to a courtroom near you: the R. Kelly sex tape.
A Chicago judge agreed to allow the videotape, which prosecutors claim shows the R&B superstar having sex with a 13-year-old girl, to be screened in open court. The footage, which has been widely disseminated online, is the core piece of evidence in Kelly's child-pornography case that's scheduled to go to trial this summer.
At a hearing on Thursday, Cook County Criminal Court Judge Vincent Gaughan said the people's right to know the details that resulted in the "Trapped in the Closet" singer being charged with 14 counts of child pornography trumps his attorney's argument that showing the sexually explicit material could lead to Kelly not getting a fair trial.
"This is the whole crux and linchpin of the case. If there was no tape, we wouldn't have a case," the judge said, per the Chicago Tribune. "I find there is not an overarching interest for excluding the public and the press from the portion of the trial that is the linchpin."
R. Kelly's lead attorney, Ed Genson, declined to comment Friday on the judge's decision, as did a spokesman for the Cook County District Attorney's Office.
In court, another Kelly lawyer, Marc Martin, told Gaughan that airing the lewd video would compromise the 39-year-old Grammy winner's ability to get an impartial jury because of the hoopla that it would inevitably generate. Martin requested that the viewing be restricted to lawyers and jurors only.
"If this tape is disseminated to the public for the trial, it's going to be a circus. We want the jury to make decisions based on the case, not on headlines," the lawyer argued. "We are not talking about keeping the public out of the courtroom. We are talking about one piece of evidence. The press does not have a right to see it. They don't have a right to possess it."
Worried about the welfare of the girl, who's now 21, and the embarrassment the video's unveiling is likely to cause her, prosecutors were willing to bend when it came to restricting the public's need to know, but not with the media.
Offering a remedy, Assistant State's Attorney Shauna Boliker said her office specifically suggested having jurors and lawyers watch the video with headphones and turn the monitors away from spectators in the courtroom.
"This is for the protection of the victim," she told Gaughan.
But after Boliker revealed that prosecutors were not intending to have the victim testify in the trial, Gaughan ruled otherwise.
No word yet on a trial date. Kelly has pleaded innocent to the charges and another status hearing is scheduled for next Thursday.