Grammy Award-winning R&B singer Robert Sylvester Kelly popularly known as R. Kelly is currently serving prison time at a Butner, North Carolina federal facility in relation to separate convictions for child sex crimes and racketeering. In a series of filings that started last week, Kelly’s attorneys claim that prison officials sought out leaders of a white supremacist gang to kill him and prevent the release of damaging information on prison officials. After that filing, Kelly was moved to solitary confinement, his attorneys have said.
R. Kelly is serving most of his 20-year Chicago sentence and 30-year New York sentence simultaneously.
The singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, was found guilty in Chicago in 2022 of three charges of producing child sexual abuse images and three charges of enticement of minors for sex. In 2021, he was found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking in New York. Since then, his attempts to appeal have been unsuccessful, including to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Born January 8, 1967 the American singer, songwriter, and record producer has been credited with prolific commercial success in R&B, hip hop, and pop music recordings, earning nicknames such as “the King of R&B”, “the King of Pop-Soul” and “the Pied Piper of R&B”.
Kelly’s career seemingly ended in 2019 following his arrest and subsequent convictions on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges involving sexual abuse of minors.
R. Kelly is said to have collapsed in prison and subsequently hospitalized, attorneys said in court filings this week, adding the details to the singer’s extraordinary allegations of a murder plot by prison officials that he argues require temporary release on home detention. Government lawyers have dismissed the claims as a “fanciful conspiracy.”
They also allege he was purposely given a medication overdose and required hospitalization and surgery for blood clots, but he was sent back to solitary. “These people did overdose him. They did leave him with blood clots in his lungs and remove him from a hospital that sought to do surgery to remove them,” Kelly’s attorney Beau B. Brindley wrote in a filing Tuesday. “And they did it within days of his exposure of a plan to kill him set forth by Bureau of Prisons officials.”
Attorneys cite a declaration from a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood as among their evidence. Government attorneys rejected the allegations as “repugnant” and questioned whether a Chicago judge has jurisdiction to alter Kelly’s sentence for separate convictions in Illinois and New York.
Kelly has a Friday hearing at Chicago’s federal court.
According to the Government Attorneys “Kelly has never taken responsibility for his years of sexually abusing children, and he probably never will,” government attorneys wrote. “Undeterred, Kelly now asks this Court to release him from incarceration indefinitely under the guise of a fanciful conspiracy.”
The Bureau of Prisons declined to comment Tuesday, saying it does not discuss conditions of confinement or comment on pending legal matters.
Kelly has also sought President Donald Trump’s help.
Kelly is globally known for works including the 1996 hit “I Believe I Can Fly” and the cult classic “Trapped in the Closet,” a multipart tale of sexual betrayal and intrigue.
Kelly has sold millions of albums and his songs and albums remained in demand even after allegations about his abuse of young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s. A 2008 trial in Chicago on child sexual abuse image charges ended in acquittal. Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct did not emerge until the #MeToo reckoning, reaching a crescendo after the release of the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly.”
Additional Sources: BBC News, Reuters
