R&B Legend, R Kelly Remains In Prison As Judge Rejects Emergency Release Request
A U.S. court in Chicago has denied singer Robert Kelly’s request for emergency release from prison to home confinement.
R. Kelly’s legal team had argued the motion on a claim that his life was endangered as he continued to be incarcerated.
R. Kelly’s lawyers have accused officials at the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Centre of conspiring with one of his former cellmates to intercept his confidential legal mail and leak it to prosecutors ahead of his trial.
They further alleged that at FCI Butner in North Carolina, where the singer is currently serving time, prison authorities tried to recruit a member of the Aryan Brotherhood to kill him.
The legal team also claimed that staff at the facility gave Kelly a potentially fatal overdose and forcibly removed him from a hospital against doctors’ advice.
In response, his attorneys filed an emergency motion and issued a public appeal for intervention from President Donald Trump.
However, U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold dismissed the request on Thursday, stating she lacked jurisdiction.
“Kelly is currently housed at FCI Butner, which is located in Butner, North Carolina —outside this judicial district,” she wrote.
“Kelly has not demonstrated a legal basis for this court’s jurisdiction. Accordingly, his emergency motion … is denied.”
Prosecutors dismissed the claims as baseless and offensive, stating, “Kelly refuses to accept responsibility for years of sexually abusing children and is using this Court’s docket merely to promote himself despite there being no legal basis to be before this court.”
Kelly, 58, is serving a 30-year sentence from a 2021 conviction in New York for racketeering and sex trafficking.
In 2022, he was also convicted in Chicago on child pornography charges.
His sentences mostly run concurrently, and his expected release date is December 21, 2045.
Meanwhile, SaharaReporters had also reported that another American R&B singer Chris Brown pleaded not guilty in his ongoing assault case before a UK court.
The singer who appeared before the court on Friday made his plea to the charge of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent during an alleged London nightclub brawl in 2023.
AFP reports that Brown was in a dark suit and tie and wearing glasses when he was in court on Friday morning, standing in the dock at Southwark Crown Court in London as the charge was put to him.
His response: “Not guilty, ma’am,” to the charge.
Recall that he was freed from UK custody in May on £5 million ($6.7 million) bail after his arrest in the northwestern city of Manchester.
The singer is charged with “grievous bodily harm with intent” in relation to an assault in which the victim was allegedly struck several times with a bottle before being pursued, punched and kicked.
