Is it a mole? Is it not a mole? Why do they call them moles? Just some of the question you may have asked had you been at the R Kelly trial in Chicago yesterday.
Yes, with the defence now giving their arguments, attention returned to the mole on the r&b star's back. As you'll remember, in their opening remarks Kelly's lawyers showed the court a photo of their client's back and pointed out a mole. That mole did not appear, they said, on the back of the man in the sex tape at the heart of this case, thus proving it could not be the singer in the vid. However, the prosecution then wheeled in an expert who said you could see the mole on the video, and he produced stills from it where a mark on the sex tape star's lower back could be seen.
But the defence team yesterday presented video analysis expert Charles Palm who said that in his opinion the black mark seemingly on the man's back is actually a result of the poor quality of the tape which has seemingly been duplicated several times. The mark, he adds, isn't always there, supporting his theory. Palm told the courtroom: "I see a black mark but it doesn't appear to be a mole".
Palm also disagreed with two video expert types presented by the prosecution who had claimed that manipulating the tape so that the man in the video looked more like Kelly would have been incredibly difficult, and would have involved months and month of pain-staking work. Palm said a video like the one at the heart of this case - which was shown to the jury at the outset of the trial - could be easily 'mocked up' in a few months. To demonstrate this he showed a different version of the tape in which the male and female participants fade in and out seemingly revealing more of the room where it was filmed. That effect, he said, was created in "a couple of spare hours".
Under cross-examination Palm admitted that there was nothing in particular about the tape shown by the prosecution to suggest it had been manipulated, but he said the picture quality was too degraded to be sure.
Earlier in day the defence presented another witness to throw doubt on the credibility of the prosecution's star witness, Lisa Van Allen, who, as previously reported, claimed last week to have had three threesomes with Kelly and the underage girl that it's alleged appears in the sex tape. The defence argue that Van Allen, under the influence of her boyfriend Yul Brown, has made the allegations as part of a failed attempt to extort money out of the singer. Private investigator Jack Palladino told the court the couple told Kelly's people they had been offered $300,000 by a publisher for her story, the implication being the singer could buy her silence. Referring to a meeting he had with the couple earlier this year he said "I assume they were trying to solicit a bribe". He admitted no such bribe was explicitly mentioned, but he said that their language "was a coded way to get money from my client", adding that he is sure no book deal ever existed.
Kelly is accused of filming himself have sex with an underage girl, and faces fifteen years in jail if found guilty. The case continues.