The case against Nicki Minaj's brother, Jelani Maraj, is still underway as the prosecutor is urging the jury to give the victim “her voice back.”
Page Six reports that a Long Island prosecutor told the courtroom yesterday that Maraj must be convicted, based on physical and eyewitness evidence that he raped his step-daughter for eight months beginning when she was just 11-years-old. The victims younger brother previously told the courtroom that he witnessed the rape when he broke his pencil and went looking for his sister in the basement of their home.
"Today, you have the power to give (the victim) her voice back. You have the power to stand up in a way she could not,” Nassau Assistant DA Emma Slane said. “For eight months, (the victim) was too scared to speak. For months … his violence worked. But by the luck of her baby brother looking for a pencil, we might not be here today.”
The young girl detailed graphic and disturbing details about her encounters with Jelani that correlate to the semen found on her pyjamas, matching Jelani's DNA. “She told you how much it hurt, how scared she was, how much she cried,” Emma said of the alleged attacks. “You know a little girl is not capable of making that up.”
Maraj’s defence lawyer, David Schwartz, previously stated that this whole case is a set-up by the victim's mother to get money from Nicki. Adding, “the evidence of a shakedown is just overwhelming in this case.”
In the latest hearing, Emma explained that if the family wanted money they would have made a claim against Nicki herself, as Jelani has "nothing."
“Tell those two children you heard them. Deliver the justice that is so desperately needed in this case. Hold him accountable. Find him guilty,” she told the courtroom.