R. Kelly , the R&B star who’s been locked up since 2019 awaiting trials in four separate state and federal sex-crimes cases, will …
R. Kelly, the R&B star who’s been locked up since 2019 awaiting trials in four separate state and federal sex-crimes cases, will face a federal court jury starting Wednesday as his first trial, on multiple charges of sex-trafficking and racketeering, gets underway in New York. Kelly,54, is already in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, having been moved there in June from a similar federal facility in Chicago. Kelly had been in the Chicago jail since he was arrested in July 2019. His repeated attempts to be released on bail while awaiting trial during the COVID-19 pandemic were turned down. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him in all of the cases. This trial, in the Eastern District of New York before U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly, has been delayed multiple times since 2019 due to the pandemic, plus scheduling conflicts with some of the other three criminal cases Kelly faces. In New York, he is charged with multiple counts, including child pornography, kidnapping, obstruction of justice, sex-trafficking and racketeering for purposes of sexual exploitation of children. Prosecutors accuse him of leading “a criminal enterprise” of managers, bodyguards and other employees, who allegedly helped Kelly to recruit women and underage girls for sex and pornography, and to cross state lines for that purpose. The trial is projected to last about a month. The charges involve a half-dozen women and girls; so far their names have not been made public. Some of these Jane Does can be expected to testify, and if so only their first names will be made public in court, Judge Donnelly said at a pretrial hearing Tuesday according to a court transcript obtained by USA TODAY. Prosecutors received permission from Donnelly to present evidence to the jury about how Kelly allegedly had “sexual contact” with Jane Doe #1, whose description matches the late singer Aaliyah, when she was underage, and that he believed she became pregnant. Kelly secretly married the singer in August 1994, when she was 15 and he was 27, according to prosecutors. (The marriage was soon annulled and Aaliyah died in an August 2001 plane crash in the Bahamas.) Prosecutors argue he secretly arranged the marriage to protect himself from criminal charges, because a wife can’t be forced to testify against a husband, according to a document filed by the prosecution last week. Kelly also allegedly ordered an associate to bribe a government official in Chicago to make a fake ID for her to show her age as 18, prosecutors said in the document. “It’s clearly relevant and it clearly shows a motive for Racketeering Act Number One, so that is admissible,” Donnelly said. “Obviously, with all of these things I’m not going to permit hearsay.
