Jury selection was completed at R. Kelly’s child pornography trial Thursday amid contentious exchanges between prosecutors and defense attorneys, who accused each other of trying to stack the panel along racial lines, reports The Associated Press.

Of the 12 jurors who will open the case, eight are white and four are black. The four alternates include two blacks, one Hispanic and one white. Defense attorneys objected several times as prosecutors used challenges to have several blacks dismissed from the jury pool.

“I think they’re using these (challenges) to get rid of African Americans,” said Sam Adam Sr., one of Kelly’s attorneys. A little later, he complained that “they’ve used 50 percent of their challenges on African Americans.”

As previously reported, the R&B superstar is accused of videotaping himself having sex with a girl as young as 13 years old.

Kelly mostly kept his head down at one end of a conference table while potential jurors were questioned, scribbling notes on yellow index cards in his lap. Between the sessions with each juror, Kelly stretched his arms and yawned.

But when one young man, later named as an alternate, told the judge that pictures don’t always reveal the whole truth of a situation, Kelly looked up and nodded his head in agreement.

Credit: Associated Press