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By Emmanuel Adeleke
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced popular R&B singer, Robert Kelly, aka R. Kelly, to 20 years in prison for child sex crimes, after a jury found that he had produced three videos of himself sexually abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter.
In a victory for the defence, the judge ruled that all but one year of the prison sentence would be served at the same time as a previous 30-year sentence that Kelly received after a jury in Brooklyn,New York, convicted him.of racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
The jury in Chicago convicted Kelly of six of the 13 charges brought against him in connection with sexual abuse during the 1990s, including counts of coercing three minors into sexual activity and three of producing sex tapes involving a minor. He was acquitted of a charge that he had attempted to obstruct an earlier investigation into his abuse of the goddaughter, and two other counts of enticing minors to have sex.
Federal prosecutors had argued that Kelly, 56, deserved 25 years in prison on top of his earlier sentence, citing the singer’s “lack of remorse” as a reason he would pose a danger to society if released.
The judge in Chicago, Kelly’s hometown, where he was once seen as a source of pride ruled that most of the new sentence would be served concurrently with the previous one, with all but one year taken at the same time.
With the ruling, Kelly will spend a maximum of 31 years in prison, which is a victory for his team of counsel that urged the court in its sentencing memorandum that “a concurrent sentence is what fairness demands.”
His lawyers accused the prosecution of engaging in a “quest to ensure that Kelly never sees the light of day.”
Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, is appealing both of his federal convictions.
Kelly and two ex-associates had been accused of rigging the singer’s 2008 child pornography proceedings in which a jury delivered a verdict of not guilty.
The federal conviction in Chicago came one year after Kelly was convicted in New York of systematically recruiting teenagers and women for sex.
That verdict was widely seen as a milestone. It was the first major sex abuse trial where the majority of the accusers were Blblack women.
It was also the first time Kelly faced criminal consequences for the abuse he was rumoured for decades to have inflicted on women and children.