R&B singer R. Kelly has “numbness in his hand, anxiety, and an untreated hernia,” his lawyer said in a court filing Monday.
The 11-page document filed in federal court in the Eastern District of New York is the latest in a so-far unsuccessful bid by Kelly’s lawyer to spring him from jail while he faces a bevy of federal charges.
Though Kelly has been moved to general population in Chicago’s downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center, defense attorney Steve Greenberg argued in the new filing that Kelly’s conditions of confinement “remain stifling.”
Greenberg pointed out Kelly “has a number of health issues which need to be addressed and for which he is not presently receiving adequate medical care.”
“He is limited to 300 minutes on the telephone, per month,” Greenberg wrote. “His visits are severely restricted; presently, he is only allowed one unrelated person to visit. In other words, although he lives and has lived with two lady friends, only one of them is allowed to be on his visiting list, and after 90 days he is required to switch.
“No other friends or professional colleagues are allowed to visit. That is not right.”
A status hearing in Kelly’s New York case is set for Wednesday.
Kelly faces a combined 18 counts in federal indictments in Chicago and Brooklyn and could go to prison for as many as 195 years for the Chicago case alone. Out east, he potentially faces decades more behind bars.
In Chicago, he faces 13 counts revolving around child pornography, enticing a minor into illegal sexual activity and a conspiracy to obstruct justice — alleging Kelly thwarted a state court prosecution of him a decade ago with threats, gifts and six-figure payoffs.
A trial in the federal case in Chicago is set for April.
The Chicago indictment describes alleged behind-the-scenes maneuvering designed to protect Kelly during the state court prosecution. It says Kelly 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 tapes of Kelly having sex with minors before prosecutors found them.
Nevertheless, federal prosecutors in Chicago have said they have three Kelly sex tapes in their possession and can present evidence of a fourth
