Deliberation, discussion and decision-making: all major factors involved in writing about a legal case that hasn’t yet been decided either way.

Strangely enough, these things are also associated with the jury in the R Kelly child pornography trial.

Would you believe it? Of course, this brings up a wonderful revelation – it shouldn’t be too long before hecklerspray can refer to R Kelly in whatever terms we see fit, with the full backing of the law on our side.

Yes: the jury have heard the prosecution, the defence, rebuttals, witnesses and counter-cross-ultra-examinations, and they’ve run off to that room probably occupied by Twelve Angry Men to decide once and for all what the media are allowed to refer to R Kelly as.

And probably, more importantly, if the man is to serve jail time or if he is cleared of the charges held against him.

The future looks bright.

That’s as in ‘the future looks bright because it means we don’t have to pussyfoot around as much with our language for fear of being sued’, of course, and not some other misconstrued meaning attributed to the phrase. Obviously.

The case has been through a lot over the last few months, most recently the confusion as to who in the blue hell was in the video presented to the courts. Though whoever it was may have definitely had a mole – or did they? So no one is really sure who it was in the video, but whoever it was may have had a mole, though it may have been an ‘artifact’.

Good lord the jury must be confused by now.

It didn’t help that the defence were throwing around biblical quotes:

“Second Corinthians 11, verse 14. And Satan shall come disguised as an angel of light. That is what she is. She is a liar. She is an extortionist.”

And it can’t have made it easy when the prosecution relied on one of those pesky ‘experts’ to back up their case.

Though we would likely be the best one on the planet, hecklerspray would hate to be a juror in this case. And it’s clear that the actual jurors are taking their time on this one, since they’ve been deliberating for around a day now after starting on Thursday afternoon. According to CBS 2′s legal analyst Irv Miller this may very well be a good thing for R:

“A lot of people who have seen the entire trial say this is a slam dunk guilty and others are saying, ‘Hey, listen, there’s reasonable doubt there’.”

Time will tell. A verdict will come. And when it does, hecklerspray will know – either way – how we stand legally when talking about R Kelly. It’s been a long ride, but we’re nearly at the end of this particular legal tunnel.

Oh, and so is R Kelly. Forgot about that fact for a second there.

It’s an age-old defence and one that many, many people have relied on throughout the ages to help them avoid being shouted at, dumped, ignored or sent to prison on alleged charges of having sex with an underage girl and filming it: “It wasn’t me.”

Even Shaggy relied on it at one point, though the dolt did ruin the get-out clause for the rest of us by making it public knowledge.

Now, as fate would have it and as the mole/artifact argument would have us believe, the man in the video being examined in the R Kelly child sex trial isn’t actually R himself. It is, as the defence have stated, a lookalike.

According to the defence, the man in the video must have had access to Kelly’s property and the video was edited to make it look as if Kelly himself was taking advantage of the underage girl.

Though they also claim that the girl in the video isn’t actually the one who claims to be the girl in the video, and is actually a different girl altogether. In the video.

This was ascertained by interviewing members of the original girl’s family, who all basically said ‘yeah, that’s not her’.

Still with us? We don’t blame you if you aren’t, seeing as apparently no one in the video is who they were originally claimed to be. Never mind ‘it wasn’t me’, apparently ‘it wasn’t anybody anyone knows, at all, ever, anywhere’. It’s certainly a bold defence, that much is for certain. As MTV reported:

The lawyers suggested that the man is a look-alike who lacks a large mole on his back that Kelly has, arguing that a mark on the man’s back comes and goes during the tape. However, they provided no leads on this man’s identity and admitted that he must have had access to R Kelly’s house.

The music-site-cum-ultimate-news-source went on:

The defence countered the statements from relatives of the girl on the tape by finding other relatives who testified to say that it wasn’t her, this helped their argument by spreading confusion.

You’re bloody well right it spread confusion. Now we don’t know who to believe, or what to believe, or even why to believe anything. hecklerspray prides itself on knowing everything there is to know, but these crafty lawhounds have ruined everything by being really, really, irritatingly confusing. How do they sleep at night?

Christ – they didn’t even call any star or surprise witnesses to throw everyone off and give us the surprise and joy that we all get through watching the trial of a major musician for serious crimes. Twats.

There are, fortunately, some things we do know:

1) R Kelly’s defence rested after just two days, clearly feeling confident that their campaign of sending sane minds into disarray will bring their client home free.

2) The prosecution is expected to recall video experts to analyse the footage. Again.

3) There are only a few stages left before a verdict is finally reached and Kelly is either released into a world where trial-by-tabloid incites fear in any celebrity, or he is sent down for abusing an adolescent. Neither of which will be that rosy for the R&B star.

The trial continues.

It’s obvious to everyone with any sense that it isn’t R Kelly in the sex tape at the centre of his child pornography trial.

Really, it isn’t. R Kelly has a caterpillar-shaped mole on his back, you see, and the man in the R Kelly sex tape doesn’t have a caterp… oh wait, yes he does. Bum.

However, just because R Kelly and the man in the sex tape appear to have similarly-shaped birthmarks on the same part of their backs, it doesn’t make R Kelly guilty of anything. That’s because, according to a defence analyst yesterday, there aren’t any moles on the R Kelly sex tape at all – only artifacts. What’s an artifact? God knows. Let’s go!

Credit where credit’s due, R Kelly’s defence is really earning its money at the moment. Had it been us in charge of proving his innocence, we’d have sat through all the prosecution’s witnesses and video experts and then, when it was our turn, we’d have conceded because we couldn’t resist stopping R Kelly from releasing any more albums until the year 2023.

But not R Kelly’s defence, because that’s playing out of its skin right now. No matter what you throw at it, it’s got an answer. All those family members positively identifying the alleged victim in the sex tape? Here’s a bunch of family members negatively identifying the alleged victim in the sex tape. That woman who said she had threesomes with R Kelly and the alleged victim? She’s not very trustworthy, you know.

That mole on R Kelly’s back that seems to match the mole on the back of the man in the sex tape? Well, um, wait a minute.

No, hang on, that’s not a mole on Mr Sex Tape’s back. That’s an artifact. Forensic video analyst Charles Palm said so. So shove it, haterz. The Chicago Tribune reports:

When the sex tape is played at normal speed, the man’s naked back is visible for less than a second, and it’s difficult to spot any markings. But a prosecution witness last week showed jurors a freeze-frame image of the male participant’s back and pointed out what the witness called a mole to the left of his spine. Kelly’s defense team countered the potentially damaging testimony Thursday with their own expert, who described the markings as “artifacts” created by the tape’s poor quality and multiple reproductions.

It’s a completely feasible argument, because the recording in question is not the original tape, and could have been copied several times over. When that happens, all sorts of blips and scrapes can sneak onto the tape – like that old home video of us eating a picnic that, when copied, made it look as if were forcing a 14-year girl to urinate and call us ‘daddy’. It’s a common technical glitch, happens all the time.

While he was in court, Charles Palm also countered the prosecution’s claim that it would be impossible to doctor the tape in any way by showing the jury self-edited versions of the sex tape where he made the participants vanish from a hot tub and another one where he erased their heads for the duration.

According to Charles Palm, he managed to manipulate the tape in a couple of afternoons, putting a dirty, great hole in one of the prosecution’s main arguments.

True, that means he spent two whole afternoons watching illegal and degrading child sex acts in painful slow motion on a giant screen in a dark room and it’s probably made him afraid of all human intimacy for the rest of his life, but if it means R Kelly stays free to release new albums of sexy R&B every couple of years, then he can write it off as an acceptable loss.

The R Kelly child pornography trial is now underway, and it looks like things are even more disgusting than we thought.

Because, on the opening day of the trial, the now infamous alleged R Kelly sex tape was played to jurors and – we can’t believe we have to tell to tell you something as sordid as this – it features dancing. To a Backstreet Boys song.

Oh, and also it allegedly shows R Kelly urinating, his possibly 13-year-old sex partner urinating and several creepy instances of the word ‘Daddy’. But one thing the R Kelly sex tape doesn’t feature is The Spice Girls, because as soon as one of their songs comes on the radio, R Kelly allegedly halts proceedings and switches channel. Suck it Geri Halliwell, you’re not even good enough to soundtrack lurid child sex videos! In your face!

A show of hands please – who’s ever listened to a Backstreet Boys song, say Quit Playing Games With My Heart or Everybody, and been so touched by its magic that you’ve had to immediately go out and degrade a child by urinating on its face? Most of you? Wow, you guys really like the Backstreet Boys.

R Kelly allegedly too, if prosecutors at the just-started R Kelly child pornography trial know what they’re talking about. After years of delays thanks to ladder-related mishaps and improperly-rested bus drivers, opening arguments were yesterday heard in a trial that could stretch on for several weeks. And, really, what are opening arguments without grainy home video footage of a man having sex with a 13-year-old girl?

Because make no mistake, the prosecution seemed so keen to go out and nail R Kelly from the outset that it just went and played jurors the alleged R Kelly sex tape right from the get-go – but not without getting all creepy circus ringmaster on them first. The Chicago Tribune reports:

“You will see that child perform acts you’ve never seen before,” Boliker said. The tape begins with a man handing the female participant money. At his instruction, the female dances for him while “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys plays. At times, he can be heard telling her to “dance faster, baby,” before instructing her to urinate for the camera. The female often refers to him as “Daddy” while the two engage in dirty talk. The two pause briefly when a Spice Girls song comes on the radio and the man stops to change the station. The video ends with the man urinating and finishing the sex act.

Acts we’ve never seen before? That’s building her part up a bit, isn’t it? Hang around Chatham High Street for long enough on a Friday night and you’ll see children doing worse than that, trust us. Although, to be fair, none of them will ever be seen dead dancing to the Backstreet Boys. They’re not animals.

Anyway, it wasn’t just the prosecution that got to have a crack at an opening argument – the defence also managed to creep in with a compelling angle or two as well. According to R Kelly’s lawyer Sam Adam Jr, the man in the sex tape can’t be R Kelly because R Kelly has a mole on his back and the man in the tape doesn’t, also the girl accused of taking part in the tape isn’t who everyone thinks she is either, because:

“[The alleged victim] is sweet and nice. The woman in this tape is a prostitute.”

I’ll be interesting to see where the R Kelly child pornography case goes from here, because now that everyone’s seen the sex tape for themselves and the mole argument is already out there, there can’t be much else to discuss. It’s not like the Phil Spector murder trial, where days can be spent analysing exactly how a woman’s tongue would loll around immediately after you’ve shot her in the mouth, is it.

There’s a chance that a bunch of 13-year-old girls could be pulled into the courtroom and ordered to dance to the Backstreet Boys and piss on the floor at the same time for demonstrative purposes to see if it whips R Kelly up into such a sexual frenzy that he immediately composes another song about how his willy works in a similar way to a car key on the spot, but that seems unlikely.

Also, we should mention that a member of the jury left the R Kelly child pornography trial yesterday as well. It was the rape victim juror, who apparently wouldn’t be able to keep up her mortgage repayments if she remained on the jury. She was replaced by a man whose uncle once went to jail for child pornography offences. That’s bound to make a difference to the outcome of the trial, but we won’t find out exactly how until we’ve discovered whether he calls his uncle Uncle Disgusting Paedo or Uncle Wrongly Incarcerated And I Will Have My Vengeance. Makes a difference, see.

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Lurid opening to Kelly trial - CT