R. Kelly's former business manager wants feds to pay his legal bill following acquittal on conspiracy charges
CHICAGO (CBS) -- One month after he was acquitted of all charges accusing him of helping R. Kelly rig his 2008 child pornography trial, attorneys for the singer's former business manager are asking a judge to award Derrel McDavid $850,000 in legal fees.
McDavid's attorney filed a motion Tuesday asking U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber to order the federal government to foot the bill for McDavid's legal fees, arguing the decision to prosecute him in the first place "was vexatious, frivolous, and in bad faith."
Defense attorney Beau Brindley said McDavid still owes $600,000 of his $850,000 legal tab, and "must now liquidate real property and other assets in an attempt to pay."
A federal jury last month convicted Kelly on three child pornography counts, and three counts of enticing minors for sex; but acquitted him of seven other charges, including obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to receive child pornography.
McDavid and co-defendant Milton "June" Brown, Kelly's former assistant, were acquitted of all charges accusing them of conspiring to rig Kelly's 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County by covering up incriminating sex tapes, and intimidating and paying off the 14-year-old girl at the center of that trial, as well as her parents.
"The government has stretched this case well-beyond reasonable limits while attempting to bring an indictment against Mr. McDavid," Brindley wrote in his motion.
McDavid's attorney argued the prosecution's case relied on testimony from "admitted liars, thieves, and extortionists" whose testimony "irreconcilably contradict each other on key aspects of their respective accounts of events."
"If their witnesses were all taken to be telling the truth about what they said on the witness stand, then the government's theory was totally incoherent and their witnesses' accounts irreconcilable," Brindley wrote.
Brindley wrote that, in the two months ahead of the trial, he worked 80 hours per week, and during the monthlong trial itself, he worked 100 hours per week, on top of 500 hours reviewing evidence in the months before preparing for trial.
Arguing that a $750 hourly rate for an attorney of his experience and expertise, Brindley argued that his "conservative estimate" of 1,220 hours worked at a rate of $696.22 per hour "is imminently reasonable."
Federal prosecutors have not yet filed a response to Brindley's motion, and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment.
