R&B singer R. Kelly (center) is shown in June arriving at the Leighton Criminal Court Building for an arraignment on sex-related felonies in Chicago.
Amr Alfiky/Associated Press
“How could he flee? He has no money,” his attorney countered. “There’s no evidence that he’s a risk to minors at all at this point.”
R. Kelly was ordered held without bail on Tuesday after federal prosecutors described him as “an extreme danger to the community, especially to minor girls,” at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
“This risk of obstruction is real. This risk is ongoing. This risk is heightened by the defendant’s fame and power,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Angel Krull told Judge Harry Leinenweber.
Kelly “has a unique ability to influence and intimidate witnesses and victims, and that continues to this day,” Krull said.
But Kelly’s attorney, Steve Greenberg, said his client can be trusted not to flee if released from custody.
“Unlike his most famous song — ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ — Mr. Kelly doesn’t like to fly,” Greenberg said.
“How could he flee? He has no money,” Greenberg added. “There’s no evidence that he’s a risk to minors at all at this point.”
Federal prosecutors last week broadsided Kelly with two indictments that threaten to put him behind bars for the rest of his life. In Brooklyn and Chicago, Kelly faces a combined 18 counts for alleged crimes against 10 victims.
Kelly’s arraignment and detention hearing started about 1 p.m. in Leinenweber’s 19th floor courtroom at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. Camera crews had been camping out in the lobby since 9 a.m.
Among those spotted going into the courthouse for the hearing were Joycelyn Savage and Azriel Clary, Kelly’s live-in girlfriends.
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The use of phones, computers and other devices was prohibited in court during the hearing. Journalists are able to report from a separate overflow room.
Kelly faces a maximum prison sentence of 195 years in Chicago alone — and some charges here carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. The 52-year-old R&B singer faces decades more in New York. And Kelly already faced state charges that could put him behind bars for up to 30 years.
Kelly has been locked up in Chicago’s downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center ever since federal agents arrested him while he walked his dog around 7 p.m. Thursday near his downtown apartment. Prosecutors revealed their indictments the next day, and they’ve said he should remain in custody.
Greenberg wants him out.
“The man’s entitled to be held in a humane situation.” Greenberg said in court Tuesday, adding: “Mr. Kelly is a difficult prison to have [at the MCC] because of other prisoners ... because of his notoriety.”
But Krull argued that home confinement and electronic monitoring are not sufficient.
“The defendant can entice girls to his own doorstep, he doesn’t have to leave his home to do that,” Krull told the judge Tuesday.
In Chicago, Kelly faces 13 counts revolving around child pornography, enticing a minor into illegal sexual activity, and a conspiracy to obstruct justice; Kelly is accused of thwarting his prosecution a decade ago with threats, gifts and six-figure payoffs.
Also named as defendants in that case are Kelly’s longtime manager, Derrel McDavid, and Kelly employee Milton “June” Brown.
In Brooklyn, Kelly faces a broader racketeering case alleging his music career was designed to enable and protect him as he sexually exploited young women by isolating them, controlling them and making them call him “Daddy.”
Kelly has long denied wrongdoing. His attorney, Steve Greenberg, said the singer looks forward “to his day in court, to the truth coming out and to his vindication from what has been an unprecedented assault by others for their own personal gain.”
The effort to prosecute Kelly gained steam with the release earlier this year of the Lifetime documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly.” But it dates to 2002, when Jim DeRogatis— then a music critic and reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times — received a sex tape he passed on to police.
Kelly faced trial for child pornography in 2008. A jury acquitted the artist, complaining to reporters that Kelly’s alleged victim never took the stand.
This time, prosecutors said, that alleged victim is cooperating with authorities.
But the new indictment in Chicago describes alleged behind-the-scenes maneuvering designed to protect Kelly during that 2008 trial. It says Kelly, McDavid and others intimidated the alleged victim and her parents into lying to police and a grand jury. They also allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars as they tried to track down other tapes of Kelly having sex with minors before prosecutors found them.
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“Mr. Kelly was the leader of that conspiracy to obstruct justice. Whatever his co-defendants did in furtherance of that obstruction of justice, they did on his behalf,” Krull argued in court Tuesday.
The indictment says Kelly gave his alleged victim a GMC Yukon Denali in August 2013 and continued to make payments to her as recently as October 2015.
“They say the case was somehow rigged,” Greenberg said Tuesday, dismissing the assertion.
“He went to trial. He didn’t have a bench trial. He had a jury.”
Nevertheless, federal prosecutors in Chicago claim they have three Kelly sex tapes in their possession and can present evidence of a fourth.
“There is no question that it is the defendant on these videos,” Krull said.
The New York indictment is broader in scope, alleging Kelly and others around him worked not only to promote his music and brand — but to recruit women and girls for illegal sexual activity.
Kelly allegedly: would not let his victims leave their room without his permission — not even to eat or go to the bathroom; forced them to wear baggy clothing; forbade them from looking at other men; and required them to call him “Daddy.”
One victim in that case has alleged that when she came to Chicago to meet with Kelly, she was told to go to a recording studio where she was led to a bedroom. An associate of Kelly’s there copied her driver’s license and made her sign what she thought was a nondisclosure agreement. Then she said she spent three days locked in the bedroom, records show.
Finally, after someone gave her something to eat and drink, she said she became tired and dizzy.
“She woke up some time thereafter to the defendant with her in the bedroom in circumstances that made clear he had sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious,” prosecutors wrote.
