Elizabeth Geddes, the assistant U.S. attorney delivering the closing statement at R. Kelly’s federal trial in Brooklyn this week, is an experienced prosecutor with a background in cases involving racketeering — the complex top charge that Mr. Kelly faces.

Ms. Geddes has worked in Brooklyn’s Eastern District for 15 years, where she currently heads the civil rights section of the office’s criminal division. During closing arguments this week, she has painstakingly worked her way through the underlying accusations against Mr. Kelly, seeking to convince jurors that he was at the center of a criminal enterprise that abused underage boys and girls, and women, for decades.

Ms. Geddes helped prosecute a large federal organized crime case in 2011, and the following year her case against the Colombo crime family led 38 defendants to plead guilty. Ms. Geddes later received the Bradford Award, bestowed to assistant U.S. attorneys for outstanding performance, based on “a variety of investigations and prosecutions resulting in the near complete dismantlement of the Colombo crime family.”

Racketeering charges are often used to prosecute organized crime, and in 2019 Ms. Geddes worked on a case that saw the indictment of another 20 defendants, including 11 Colombo crime family members and associates. That racketeering case involved accusations of extortion and loan-sharking.

Ms. Geddes also works as an adjunct professor of clinical law at N.Y.U. Law.

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