CHICAGO _ A federal judge in New York has once again rejected R. Kelly's request for release pending trial, stating that his diagnosis of prediabetes is not enough to put him at high risk of contracting COVID-19 behind bars.
The embattled singer has been seeing medical professionals in the downtown Chicago jail where he is being held, and they have recommended he lose weight and exercise. That should be enough to manage his condition, U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly wrote in a ruling Friday.
It was Kelly's third bid for release and his third rejection.
The judge has noted that if released, Kelly might threaten or tamper with witnesses, as he is alleged to have done before his 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County, which ended in acquittal. And he is a flight risk due to the serious nature of the charges against him, she wrote.
There are 49 inmates at Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center with confirmed COVID-19 infections, and 15 staffers, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Kelly, 53, has been held without bond since his arrest on federal charges last July. He has been charged with racketeering conspiracy in U.S. District Court in New York alleging he identified underage girls attending his concerts and groomed them for later sexual abuse.
Kelly is also charged in a federal indictment in Chicago with conspiring with two former employees _ longtime manager Derrel McDavid and former employee Milton "June" Brown _ to rig his 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County by paying off witnesses and victims to change their stories.
That indictment also alleged Kelly and his co-defendants paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover child sex tapes before they fell into the hands of prosecutors.
The singer is charged in four separate indictments in Cook County alleging he sexually assaulted or abused four women, three of whom were underage at the time.
An additional case is pending in Minnesota, where authorities allege Kelly solicited a teenager who asked for his autograph in 2001.
