CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago prosecutor stated Monday that she’s dropping sex-abuse prices towards singer R. Kelly following federal convictions in two courts that ought to assure the disgraced R&B star will likely be locked up for many years.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx introduced the choice a day forward of a listening to associated to state prices accusing him of sexually abusing 4 individuals, three of whom had been minors. She stated she would ask a choose to dismiss the indictments Tuesday.
Foxx, who in 2019 had pleaded with girls and women to come back ahead so she might pursue prices towards Kelly, acknowledged that the choice “may be disappointing” to his accusers.
“Mr. Kelly is potentially looking at the possibility of never walking out of prison again for the crimes that he’s committed,” the prosecutor said, referring to his federal convictions. “While today’s cases are no longer being pursued, we believe justice has been served.”
Since Kelly was indicted in Cook County in 2019, federal juries in Chicago and New York have convicted him of a raft of crimes, including child pornography, enticement, racketeering and sex trafficking related to allegations that he victimized women and girls.
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is serving a 30-year prison sentence in the New York case and awaits sentencing on Feb. 23 in Chicago federal court. He is appealing those convictions. Based on the New York sentence alone, the 56-year-old won’t be eligible for release until he is around 80.
Foxx said she reached out to Kelly’s lawyer two weeks ago to indicate that charges might be dropped. She also spoke to the women whose allegations were at the heart of the case.
Foxx expressed praise for the “braveness it took for them to come back ahead.”
Messages seeking comment from Kelly’s attorney were not immediately returned.
Prosecutors sometimes choose to go ahead with more trials out of a concern that convictions elsewhere could be reversed during appeals. They see an opportunity for additional convictions as insurance.
“We didn’t do a monetary cost-benefit analysis,” Foxx said, adding, however, that resources spent on a trial now could instead be used “in advocacy for other survivors of sexual abuse.”
Another sexual-misconduct case is pending in Hennepin County, Minnesota, where the Grammy Award-winner faces solicitation charges. That case, too, has been on hold while the federal cases played out. Minnesota prosecutors haven’t said whether they still intend to take Kelly to trial.
Known for his smash hit “I Believe I Can Fly” and for sex-infused songs such as “Bump n’ Grind,” Kelly sold millions of albums even after allegations about his abuse of young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s. He beat child pornography charges in Chicago in 2008, when a jury acquitted him.
Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t emerge until the #MeToo reckoning and the release of the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” in early 2019.
Foxx introduced the Cook County prices months earlier than the federal circumstances in New York and Chicago. Foxx’s workplace alleged he repeatedly sought out women for intercourse, together with one he encountered at her 16th party and one other who met the Kellyr whereas he was on trial in 2008.
Federal prosecutors in New York advised jurors at his 2021 trial that Kelly used his entourage of managers and aides to fulfill women and maintain them obedient, an operation that prosecutors stated amounted to a felony enterprise.
Last 12 months, prosecutors at Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago portrayed him as a grasp manipulator who used his fame and wealth to reel in star-struck followers, a few of them minors, to sexually abuse then discard them. Four accusers testified.
While prosecutors in that case received convictions on six of the 13 counts towards him in that case, the federal government misplaced the marquee depend — that Kelly and his then-business supervisor efficiently rigged his 2008 baby pornography trial.
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Associated Press reporter Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.
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Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mtarm and discover extra of AP’s protection of R. Kelly’s trials at https://apnews.com/hub/r-kelly
