CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago prosecutor said Monday she is dropping the sexual assault charges against singer R. Kelly, following federal convictions in two courts that will see the disgraced R&B star jailed for decades.
Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney for the state of Cook County, announced the decision a day before a court hearing related to allegations from the state accusing him of sexually assaulting four people, three of whom were minors. Foxx said she would ask a judge to dismiss the charges at Tuesday’s hearing.
She acknowledged that the decision “might be disappointing” for women who came forward to charge Kelly with crimes.
“Mr. Kelly is considering the possibility of never getting out of prison. … We believe justice has been served,” Foxx said.
Since Kelly was indicted in Cook County in 2019, federal juries in Chicago and New York have convicted him of a range of crimes, including child pornography, enticement, extortion and sex trafficking related to allegations that he victimized women and girls.
Born Robert Sylvester Kelly, Kelly is serving a 30-year sentence in the New York case and awaits sentencing Feb. 23 in Chicago federal court. He is appealing against those convictions. Based on the New York verdict alone, the 56-year-old will not be eligible for parole until he is around 80.
A sexual misconduct case is pending in Hennepin County, Minnesota, where the Grammy Award winner is being charged with solicitation. That case, too, has been put on hold while federal cases unfold. Minnesota prosecutors have not said whether they still intend to bring Kelly to trial.
Prosecutors sometimes choose to continue with more trials out of concern that convictions elsewhere could be overturned on appeal. They see an opportunity for additional convictions as insurance.
Known for his smash hit “I Believe I Can Fly” and sex-infused songs like “Bump n’ Grind,” Kelly sold millions of albums even after allegations of his abuse of young girls began to surface in the 1990s. circulate. He dismissed child pornography charges in Chicago in 2008 when a jury acquitted him.
Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct only emerged after the #MeToo reckoning and the release of the lifelong docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly.”
After that series aired in early 2019, Foxx pleaded with prosecutors to step forward so prosecutors could pursue charges. She announced the Cook County indictment months before the federal cases in New York and Chicago. Foxx’s office alleged that he repeatedly sought out girls for sex, including one he encountered at her 16th birthday party and another the R&B star met while on trial in 2008.
Federal prosecutors in New York told jurors at his 2021 trial that Kelly used his entourage of managers and aides to meet and keep girls obedient, an operation that prosecutors say amounted to a criminal enterprise.
Last year, prosecutors at Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago portrayed him as a master manipulator who used his fame and fortune to reel in celebrity-struck fans, including some minors, then sexually assault and throw them away. Four prosecutors testified.
While prosecutors in that case won convictions on six of the 13 charges against him in that case, the government lost the large number — that Kelly and his then-business manager had successfully engineered his 2008 child pornography trial.
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Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mtarm and find more AP’s coverage of R. Kelly’s trials at https://apnews.com/hub/r-kelly
