Chicago: Disgraced musician R.J. Kelly was sentenced by an Illinois federal judge on Thursday to an additional year in prison nearly five months after being convicted of sexual abuse and solicitation of a minor.
After serving 30 years, Kelly, 56, is serving a sentence in 2021 after being found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking by a New York jury.
Kelly, whose legal name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was convicted last year of six counts of sexual assault and one charge of enticing a minor in a case stemming from complaints from women who said they were sexually assaulted when they were underage. When they did, they implicated them in sexual acts.
Federal prosecutors had asked US District Judge Harry Leinweber for the Northern District of Illinois to sentence Kelly to 25 years in prison, saying last week that the musician was “sadistic” and “a serial sexual predator” who was “a threat to society”. a serious threat to.” Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonzen, requested a sentence of about 10 years to go along with the New York sentence.
Linenweber’s full sentence includes the New York sentence as well as 19 years in prison.
The judge said he believed “the sentence should be adequate but not more than necessary,” adding that “everyone agrees that the nature of this crime is horrible, horrible.”
“No matter what I do Mr. Kelly is not going out the door in the next 10 years, in the next 20 years,” Leinenweber said. “One thing we have to keep in mind is he’s 56 and as Ms. Bonjean points out, he doesn’t have a very high life expectancy.”
In court filings ahead of Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors argued that a sentence that would have imprisoned the musician for life was “the only way to ensure Kelly does not re-offend.”
But Bonjen said he was already serving a life sentence.
“All statistical odds would have to be defied to get Kelly out of prison alive,” she said in a court filing last week.
Kelly faced 13 counts, including charges of sexual abuse of a minor, receiving child pornography, enticing a minor to engage in unlawful sexual conduct, conspiracy to obstruct justice and receiving child pornography in the Illinois trial. Conspiracy was involved. He was acquitted on seven counts, including all charges relating to conspiracy.
The singer was tried along with two co-defendants, his former business manager Darrell McDavid and his associate Milton “June” Brown, who were both found not guilty on all charges.
Prosecutors centered their case around a star witness, identified in court by the pseudonym Jane, who described herself as the person in a 26-minute videotape sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002. identified, which allegedly showed Kelly performing a sexual act with an underage girl. ,
In emotional testimony, Jane, now 38, said the singer began having sex with her when she was 15 and he was in his 30s and did so “hundreds of times” before she was 18. Keep doing it.
Several other alleged victims also testified that Singer groomed and manipulated them into sexual relationships, some recorded while they were underage.
Before sentencing, Christopher Brown, one of Jane’s attorneys, read aloud her victim impact statement to the court.
“I have lost my dignity because of Robert Kelly,” the statement said.
She asked that Kelly be “jailed for the remainder of her natural life.”
Last month, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Fox dismissed 10 state charges of sexual assault against the singer, saying “justice has been served” with the two federal convictions. He said that his office’s “limited resources and the time of the court” were the final factors, noting that the allegations were found to be credible.
