One aspect of the R. Kelly case not often noted is the fact that the man in the sex tape at the center of the case gives the girl in the tape cash before they have sex. (And before he urinates on her.) I don’t know whether the act was quote-unquote authentic or part of the ritual of the taping.

The moment suddenly became high profile in the closing arguments of the case today. Here’s the Chicago Sun-Times on the defense side:

Speaking after prosecutors had showed the jury the notorious sex tape at the center of the case one last time, defense attorney Sam Adam Jr said that the girl on the tape had accepted cash before performing a series of sex acts.

Showing the jury a studio photograph of the alleged victim on a large screen, he then told them that if they were going to find Kelly guilty of 14 counts of child pornography, “you are going to have to call (the alleged victim) 14 times individually and collectively a whore.”

Barely audible, he whispered, “My momma told me when we were kids, ‘if you ain’t got something nice to say about someone, don’t say it about her.”

He concluded his argument saying, “How are you 14 times going to call her a whore?”

Ordinarily, you’d assume the defense in a case like this would base the closing arguments on a very close reading of the mood of the jury. In this case, either the jury has been assessed as being deranged, or Kelly is not getting the defense he might have.  You assume the judge is going to give the jury instructions (or, at this point, has given the jury instructions; it has already begun deliberations) that ask, essentially, whether the man is R. Kelly and if the girl is, or was, under-aged.

It’s hard to see how focusing on yet another aspect of the poor thing’s degradation is going to help the defense in the jury room.

The Chicago Tribune has even weirder details. The paper says the attorney made a different argument, too, to wit:

Wouldn’t a 13-year-old girl blab to her friends about having sex with a star like Kelly?:

“She is a 13 year-old-girl having raunchy, dirty, nasty sex …with a superstar who’s won Grammy Awards and she tells no one?” Adam said. “You couldn’t keep a 13-year-old girl’s mouth quiet about having Hannah Montana tickets.”

Here again, what’s the purpose of speaking like this in terms of influencing the jury? Wouldn’t any 13 year old know that she wasn’t supposed to be having any sex at all, much less “raunchy, dirty, nasty sex”? What’s she supposed to say—”R. Kelly urinated on me last night?”