R. Kelly: Making A Mountain Out Of A Mole

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jun 6, 2008 7:10PM

Was it a mole or an "artifact"? That's the question that was batted around in court yesterday as the case turned its focus to a blemish on the back of the individual in the alleged R. Kelly sex tape. Kelly has "a caterpillar-shaped mark" along his spine. While the back of the man alleged to be Kelly is only visible on the tape for less than one second, both the prosecution and the defense have now presented expert witnesses to back their own case. The prosecution witness showed a freeze frame of the video which seemed to show a blemish along the man's spine. The defense's expert, forensic video analyst Charles Palm, broke the half-second of footage into separate frames (sounds exciting!) and only in two of those frames is the blemish visible before disappearing. Palm claims the alleged blemishes are "artifacts that bled into the image" created as a result of the poor quality and multiple reproductions of the tape. When we think of them flashing back and forth between "blemish-frame" and "no-blemish-frame," we can't help but to envision Kevin Costner's scene in JFK: "Back and to the left" over and over. "Mole, no mole. Mole, no mole."

And what would a day in the R. Kelly trial be without the surreal? The defense has alleged the tape could easily be doctored to make the man on the tape appear like R. Kelly (remember the Wayans Defense?). A prosecution witness testified that to seamlessly doctor the tape would take 44 years. Palm, ever the researcher, produced his own doctorings of the video. In one, he made the couple in the tape disappear from the room and in another, he removed their heads from the video, making it appear as if to headless bodies were having relations. Palm claims to have made the edits in just two days using computer software that was available at the time the video was allegedly made.