A federal jury was impaneled Tuesday in R. Kelly’s hometown of Chicago to decide multiple charges against the R&B singer, as prosecutors and defense attorneys argued toward the end of the process about whether the government was improperly attempting to keep some Blacks off the jury.

Kelly, who is Black, is accused of enticing minors for sex, of producing child pornography and of fixing his 2008 state child pornography trial at which he was acquitted.

As the sides began exercising peremptory challenges — in which they can remove a fixed number of potential jurors from the pool — Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonjean accused prosecutors of seeking to strike Blacks “to deny Mr. Kelly a jury of his peers.”

Prosecutors noted multiple African Americans had already made it onto the jury before the defense objected, and they argued their reasons for wanting to strike some had nothing to do with race. In one case, they said one older man appeared to have a hard time staying awake.

Judge Harry Leinenweber partially agreed with the defense, disallowing prosecutors from striking three Blacks from the jury, and restoring them. About half the 12 jurors impaneled were identified as Black by the judge, prosecutor and defense attorneys.

Six alternates were also selected.

Some of the jurors selected had watched at least part of a six-part documentary series, “Surviving R. Kelly,” about sex abuse allegations against the Grammy award-winning singer. Watching it wasn’t an automatic disqualification as long as a would-be juror could assure Judge Leinenweber they could still be impartial.