Police toss out new R. Kelly tapes

Oops. Guess those four copies of another alleged R. Kelly sex video weren’t incriminating after all. The Chicago Police Department announced last week that it was looking into the tapes, sent by Orange County, Fla., police after Kelly’s arrest in Florida and indictment in Chicago last month on 21 counts of child pornography for allegedly videotaping his sex acts with a 14-year-old girl. (The R&B star has pleaded not guilty to the charges.) Now, however, the Chicago police say they are returning the tapes to Florida. Although MTV News reports that the tapes contain footage of the same girl, Chicago police have decided that they have no bearing on the pending case against Kelly. ”We have found no new evidentiary information relevant to our investigation,” police spokesman Dave Bayless told MTV. ”There was no content relevant to what we’re doing up here.”

Kelly’s lawyers, who have protested that the tapes were of dubious origin and would prejudice potential jurors against their client, felt vindicated by the news that the police had already decided not to use them. ”The speed at which Chicago police leaked the initial reports of the tapes and their subsequent announcement that they had no relevance to Robert’s charges confirms what we’ve been saying all along,” Kelly’s attorney Ed Genson told MTV, ”that they’re doing everything they can to smear Robert and prejudice the jury pool.”