CHICAGO - For R. Kelly, six years of pretrial delays came down to an agonizing 10 minutes.
As a court official began slowly reading the verdict for each of the 14 counts of child pornography against him, the R&B superstar clutched the hands of his flanking lawyers. He bowed his head and shut his eyes tight, barely moving.
As the official got to the last few counts late Friday and it became clear Kelly had won a complete acquittal, tears streamed down the Grammy-winner's face.
"Thank you, Jesus," he repeated, over and over again, said one of his attorneys, Sam Adam Jr.
It had taken a jury of nine men and three women around seven hours of deliberations to acquit the 41-year-old singer on charges of videotaping himself having sex with a girl who prosecutors allege was as young as 13.
After the verdicts were read, a visibly stunned Kelly dabbed tears from his face with a handkerchief as he stood up and hugged each of his four attorneys.
Kelly, who had faced up to 15 years in prison had he been convicted, left the courthouse surrounded by bodyguards. He smiled and waved to dozens of cheering fans before climbing into a waiting sport utility vehicle.
In the end, jurors said prosecutors did not convince them that the female in the video was who they said she was.
"You want to be 100 per cent sure it's Kelly and (the alleged victim)," one juror said. "What we had wasn't enough."
Another juror said prosecutors left too many questions unanswered.
"All of us felt very much the grayness of this case," he said.
None of the five jurors who spoke to reporters after the verdict wanted to be identified.
Kelly, who won the Grammy Award in 1997 for the song "I Believe I Can Fly" and whose biggest hits are raunchy ballads like "Ignition," did not speak to reporters as he left.
But a spokesman released a statement saying Kelly always knew that "when all the facts came out in court, he would be cleared of these terrible charges. ... all he wants to do is move forward and put it behind him."
Kelly and the now 23-year-old alleged victim had denied they were on the sexually graphic videotape at the heart of the case, though neither testified during the monthlong trial.
Testimony throughout the trial centered on whether the R&B superstar was the man who appears the tape, and whether the female who also appears on it was underage.
The jurors - who deliberated for three hours Thursday after closing arguments and for about four hours on Friday - said they remained sharply divided as late as Friday morning. A vote they took just a few hours before the acquittal had seven jurors voting not guilty and five voting guilty. Of the 12 jurors, eight were white and four were black.
Several jurors said one weakness in the prosecution's case was that neither the alleged victim nor her parents testified.
One juror said he just was not sure the female was who prosecutors said she was or that she was a minor - noting her body appeared too developed. Another said that while he was convinced it was Kelly on the tape, he had doubts about the female.
Asked by a reporter after the trial who the female in the sex tape was if not the alleged victim, Adam responded: "If you find that out, let us know."
Without the alleged victim, the prosecutors relied in part on a star witness who said she engaged in three-way sex with Kelly and the girl.
Defense attorneys labeled that woman an extortionist, claiming she sought hundreds of thousands of dollars from Kelly in exchange for her silence and stole his $20,000 watch at one point. They also argued that the man on the tape did not have a large mole on his back, as Kelly does.
Jurors said the much ballyhooed mole defense rarely came up in deliberations and played no role in their verdict.
The alleged victim's family also presented a puzzle for the jury; three relatives testified they did not recognize her as the female on the tape, while other relatives said she was on the tape.
Ed Genson, one of Kelly's attorneys, said prosecutors did not have much of a case.
"As for the so-called key evidence, I think we refuted all of it," he said.
Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Shauna Boliker said she believed the female on the tape was a victim, not a prostitute as the defence had contended.
"This shows the world how difficult this crime is to prosecute," she said. "It also takes the soul of the victim, the heart of the victim."
Despite his legal troubles, Kelly - who rose from poverty on Chicago's South Side to become a star singer, songwriter and producer - still retains a huge following, and his popularity has arguably grown in recent years.
The singer has released more than half a dozen albums, most of them million-sellers. He's also had a multitude of hits and gone on tours. His recent efforts include "Trapped in the Closet," a multipart saga about the sexual secrets of an ever-expanding cast of characters.
Kelly has a new song, "Hair Braider," out now, and is due to release a new album in July.
(AP writers Mike Robinson and Maria Danilova contributed to this report)
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