R. Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonjean argued before an appeals court that prosecutors improperly utilized RICO statues to target Kelly’s music organization.
— R. Kelly’s lawyer told an appeals court Monday that all kinds of legitimate organizations — even college fraternities — could be deemed racketeering organizations under a law used to convict the R&B superstar at his Brooklyn trial of sexually abusing young fans, including children, for decades.
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean, seeking to reverse his 2021 convictions or to win him a new trial, tried to persuade three judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that prosecutors improperly used a racketeering statute written to shut down organized crime to go after the singer.
She said it wasn’t fair that prosecutors charged Kelly, 57, with leading a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) enterprise from 1994 to 2018 compromised of individuals who promoted his music and recruited women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity and to produce child pornography.
“This was not a collection of people who had a purpose to recruit girls for sexual abuse or child pornography,” Bonjean said. “Whether they turned a blind eye, whether some of them suspected that some of these girls were underage, that’s a whole different matter.
“And once we get into that sort of territory, where we’re going to say that constitutes a RICO enterprise, well we have a lot of organizations — we have a lot of frat houses — we have all types of organizations that are now going to become RICO enterprises,” she said in support of the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling songwriter.
