Lil' Kim denies perjury in shooting trial

The rapper Lil' Kim and her lawyer Mel Sachs leave Federal District Court in Manhattan. PHOTO:NY TIMES

The rapper Lil' Kim took a legal gamble on Thursday by testifying in her own defense in New York in her federal perjury trial, saying that "I did the best I could" before a grand jury in 2003 but that she had felt intimidated by a prosecutor.

The rap star, whose real name is Kimberly Jones, surprised prosecutors by taking the stand at midmorning, testifying for three and a half hours. Speaking about her grand jury appearance, she said she had not wanted to identify a friend because she was not certain he was the man in a photograph she was shown.

But in the afternoon prosecutor Cathy Seibel tore into the credibility of many of Jones' statements.

Jones, 30, is accused in US District Court in Manhattan of lying to the grand jury and obstructing justice because of the account she gave of a shootout on Feb 25, 2001, in front of the Hot 97 radio station in Manhattan.

Jones said she did not see Damion Butler, a rap producer known as D-Roc, who was then her manager, at the radio station that day. She also said she did not know the person in the photograph, Suif Jackson, a road manager who Jones acknowledged Thursday had been her friend since both were teenagers.

Jones clung tenaciously to her version that the photograph did not look like Jackson. "It could be Gutta," she testified, using Jackson's rap name, "but I didn't want to make a positive identity. I just wasn't sure."

She said that the prosecutor who questioned her, Daniel Gitner, an assistant US attorney, never asked her directly if she knew Jackson. She was just as insistent that she did not recall seeing Butler anywhere during her visit to Hot 97 that Sunday afternoon as she was making an hour-long appearance as a guest disc jockey.

She said she was thrown off by Gitner's questions. "I was a victim there, I was almost shot," Jones said. "I couldn't believe I was being badgered."

Under questioning by Mel Sachs, her lead defense lawyer, Jones described a series of increasingly angry tiffs she had with Butler and Jackson, seeking to debunk the prosecutors' theory that she had lied to protect them.

She said she had fought with Butler about a scuffle that erupted among her crew while she was making a music video in June 2001 with the singer Phil Collins. She accused Butler of stealing two watches and a ring from her, including a Rolex she valued at US$60,000. The valuables were worth a total of US$110,000, she said.

"I'm so happy I'm away from them," she said of her former friends. "They did me so wrong."

Butler and Jackson pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges from the shootout, in which one person was injured.

Jones projected a strikingly different image from her dirty-talking, scantily clad rap persona. She appeared in a white suit jacket with an apricot blouse and a prim ruffle down the front. Jones sought to distance herself from Lil' Kim.

"I'm really nothing like my music, a lot of people say," she said.

Seibel opened her cross-examination by forcing Jones to recognize herself in a video shot by a security camera that showed Jones standing inches away from Butler on the street near Hot 97, even as he pulled a handgun and started firing.

Under the prosecutor's questions, Jones claimed she did not remember going to a prison to recover money from Butler, who was carrying US$10,000 in cash when he was arrested on a marijuana charge. Jones also tried to deny that she had written rhymes attacking a rival rapper named Foxy Brown, whose real name is Inga Marchand, even though one song named Marchand's group by name. "It's just entertainment," Jones said.

Toward the end, Seibel appeared to overplay her hand at times. The prosecutor pressed Jones at length about small details in her grand jury testimony, causing exasperation in the gallery, which was packed with her relatives and supporters.