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Jennifer Hudson took the stand for nearly an hour this afternoon as the first witness in the Chicago trial of the man charged with killing her mother, brother and nephew.

“None of us wanted her to marry William,” she said of her sister’s marriage to defendant William Balfour, her voice cracking with emotion. “We did not like how he treated her.”

Crying on the stand at one point, Hudson, who has vowed to attend every day of the trial, paused for a few seconds to compose herself.

The singer choked up when asked about her relationship with her mother, saying, “I slept with my mom until I was 16 years old.”

Hudson also testified she would sign blank checks and leave them for her mother, so that she could pay the household bills.

30 year old Hudson, described the last time she saw her mother, a few days before the killings in the family home. She said she remembered it vividly because it was one of the few times that the entire family came over to share a meal. “Thank God I got that,” she testified.

Hudson’s voice cracked with emotion almost every time she spoke about her mother. At one point a deputy brought her a box of tissues and a cup of water.

Hudson testified that she knew something was wrong on the day of the killings in 2008 because her mother didn’t text her that morning as she usually did by 9 a.m.

Hudson said she learned of the killings from her sister, Julia, and flew back to Chicago to identify the bodies of her mother and brother at the medical examiner’s office. She did the same thing a few days later for her 7 year-old nephew, for whom she said she had often babysat.

On cross examination, the defense asked Hudson about brother (above) Jason Hudson’s being shot in the past. The defense’s opening statement painted a portrait of Jason, 29, as a drug dealer who “brought danger” to himself and his family.

After testifying for about 50 minutes, Hudson, who used a private entrance to gain access to court, sat in the gallery with fiance David Otunga and a bodyguard, in addition to two deputies who guarded the bench on which she sat.

Showing little emotion, Julia Hudson (above with hubby) testified later today that she knew Balfour was a drug dealer. “I eventually fell for him, after him being so persistent,” she said of their relationship

They were married Dec. 30, 2006. She didn’t invite or tell her mother, brother Jason or sister Jennifer about the wedding.

She testified that their relationship took a tumble after she returned from a trip to Japan with Jennifer promoting “Dreamgirls” in February 2007.

She said she realized in the year after Japan that Balfour was having relationships with three other women. “It was not a secret, they would call, I would answer,” she said.

She said her mother and Balfour “didn’t get along.”

“He was jealous,” she said. “Wouldn’t like anybody to do anything. Everything was a problem.”

The jealousy apparently extended to her son from a previous relationship. “Julian (her brother) couldn’t kiss me. ‘Don’t kiss my wife,’” she said Balfour would tell her then 6-year-old son, Julian.

Prosecutors went on to describe Balfour as being enraged that Julia was dating another man and said he had issued several threats against her and her family, despite his being involved with two other women. Balfour allegedly went into a rage Oct. 24, 2008, after seeing balloons sent to Julia Hudson by another man and punched them.

After fatally shooting the actress’ mother, Darnell Donerson, 57, in her living room, prosecutors allege, he shot Hudson’s brother, Jason, as he lay in bed, before kidnapping her nephew, Julian. Investigators believe the boy was shot in the head as he lay behind the front seat.

Balfour has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and his trial is expected to last a month.

If convicted of at least two of the murder counts, the 30-year-old Balfour, on parole at the time of the killings after serving nearly seven years for attempted murder and vehicular hijacking, would face a mandatory life sentence.

Meanwhile the home (seen above) of the deadly killings now sits vacant behind a rusty iron fence that separates an overgrown yard from the cracked sidewalk.

via BlackMediaScoop