CHICAGO — R&B singer R. Kelly was convicted by a federal jury in New York on Monday of racketeering conspiracy and eight other counts alleging he headed a criminal enterprise that employed agents, runners, bodyguards and others to lure and trap girls and young women to satisfy his sexually predatory desires.
The guilty verdict on the main racketeering count in the indictment was announced in U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly’s courtroom in Brooklyn. The jury, which heard from 50 witnesses over the six-week trial, reached its verdict after deliberating for about nine hours over two days.
In addition to the main count of racketeering, the jury found Kelly guilty on all eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits travel over state lines for illegal sex.
Kelly, one of the biggest music stars Chicago has ever produced, faces anywhere from 10 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced on May 4, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
Dressed in a navy blue suit and light blue tie, Kelly sat still and started straight ahead as the verdicts were read shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern time. As the jury left the courtroom, Kelly, who was wearing a face mask, stood and clasped his hands in front of him but showed no outward emotion.
After the proceedings were adjourned, Kelly whispered something to one of his lawyers before being led from the courtroom with his hands behind his back by a court security officer.
Outside the courtroom, Kelly’s lawyer, Deveraux Cannick, told reporters his team was “disappointed with the verdict” and would be exploring options for appeal.
In a brief news conference in front of the courthouse Monday afternoon, acting U.S. Attorney Jacquelyn M. Kasulis said the jury had “delivered a powerful message to men like R. Kelly” that eventually their crimes will catch up to them.
“Today's verdict forever brands R. Kelly as a predator who used his fame and fortune to prey on the young, the vulnerable and the voiceless for his own sexual gratification,” Kasulis said. “A predator who used his inner circle to ensnare underage girls and men and women for decades in a sordid web of sex abuse, degradation and humiliation.”
She also thanked federal prosecutors in Chicago and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office, which both led their own investigations into Kelly’s alleged wrongdoing.
After the news conference, a small but vocal contingent of Kelly’s supporters blasted music in the park across the street from the Brooklyn federal courthouse as they have for much of the trial. One woman, dressed in a shirt emblazoned with Kelly’s image, held up two middle fingers toward the courthouse as she yelled, “We’re not giving up! The government (is) lying!”
In all, the seven-man, five-woman jury found Kelly guilty of 12 individual criminal acts involving the racketeering scheme, including sex with multiple underage girls as well as a 1994 scheme to bribe an Illinois public aid official to get a phony ID for 15-year-old singer Aaliyah so the two could get illegally married.
The jury found prosecutors had not proved two of the alleged racketeering acts, both involving the same victim, Sonja, who testified she was held captive in Kelly’s music studio in Chicago and later sexually assaulted by the singer.
The verdict marked Kelly’s first criminal conviction after more than two decades of allegations over his sexual exploits. In 2008, Kelly was acquitted by a Cook County jury of child pornography charges alleging he videotaped himself having sex with a girl as young as 13.
The Grammy-winning singer, whose hits include 1996′s “I Believe I Can Fly,” went on to sell millions more records after that shocking verdict. But questions about his misconduct continued to dog him, culminating with the 2019 Lifetime docu-series “Surviving R. Kelly” chronicling the alleged abuse of more than a dozen girls and young women, several of whom later became the focus of the federal investigation.
Six months after the series aired, Kelly was charged with racketeering in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn in July 2019. The trial, which was delayed several times by the COVID-19 pandemic, got underway last month and featured nearly six weeks of testimony from some 50 witnesses, including a number of alleged victims who told the jury that Kelly manipulated and controlled them and forced them to have sex with him and others — often on videotape.
He also faces a pending case in Chicago’s federal courthouse, where prosecutors allege he and two others fixed his 2008 trial in Cook County, as well as four separate indictments alleging sexual abuse that are still pending at Chicago’s Leighton Criminal Court Building. Kelly also faces a solicitation case in state court in Minnesota.
Steve Greenberg, who along with Michael Leonard represents Kelly on his remaining Chicago cases, said they were “terribly disappointed” with the verdict. Greenberg and Leonard withdrew from the New York case after a dramatic shakeup of the defense team earlier this year.
“We thought when we were handling it that we had a good chance of prevailing, knowing what we know about the evidence,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “Unfortunately Robert made a choice to have other people handle it, and I leave it to others to Monday morning quarterback that decision.”
Meanwhile, Kelly still awaits trial on four separate Cook County cases as well as one indictment in Chicago’s federal courthouse.
Monday’s verdict could change the calculus significantly on the remaining cases. Kelly, facing so much time in prison, could choose to plead on some or all of them; alternately, prosecutors in the other jurisdictions may choose to drop some or all of the other charges.
“If they want to proceed (on the remaining cases), we’re going to be ready to defend them,” Greenberg told the Tribune. “... We’ll figure something out, how we’re going to proceed. I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and then go from there. ... I think anything and everything is possible and we’ll just have to see how it plays out.”
On Monday, Peter Fitzhugh, special agent in charge for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in New York, said the jury’s verdict effectively ends Kelly’s “decades-long reign of terror,” but that it would not have been possible if his victims had not stepped forward and testified.
"Today a jury of Mr. Kelly’s peers confirmed what these courageous victims have known for far too long -- Mr. Kelly is a prolific, serial predator,” Fitzhugh said.
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