R&B singer R. Kelly has formally asked President Donald Trump to commute his 31-year federal prison sentence, marking his most significant legal effort yet after years of unsuccessful appeals challenging convictions for racketeering, sex trafficking, and child sexual abuse crimes.
The request was filed with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney and is currently listed as "pending" in the federal clemency database. Rather than seeking a full pardon, Kelly is asking Trump for a commutation, which would reduce or end his prison sentence while leaving his convictions intact.
Kelly, whose legal name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, is serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina. His projected release date is January 2046.
The singer was convicted in two separate federal prosecutions. In 2021, a jury in Brooklyn found him guilty of racketeering and Mann Act violations after prosecutors argued he used his fame for decades to recruit women and underage girls for sexual exploitation. He received a 30-year prison sentence.
A year later, a federal jury in Chicago convicted Kelly on child pornography and child enticement charges. He was sentenced to an additional 20 years, but all except one year runs concurrently with his New York sentence, resulting in a combined 31-year prison term. Kelly has consistently denied the allegations.
His attorney, Beau Brindley, has spent more than a year publicly lobbying Trump and argues that Kelly's prosecution represents an improper expansion of federal racketeering laws.
"Mr. Kelly's case represents an abuse of the racketeering statute and a weaponization of the DOJ," Brindley said in a statement. "We believe [this] and many other issues make him an ideal candidate for clemency."
Brindley has also claimed Kelly's safety is at risk in prison. Last year, he filed an emergency motion seeking Kelly's release to home detention, alleging that three prison officials orchestrated a plot in which a terminally ill inmate would kill the singer in exchange for early release.
"The only thing that can protect Mr. Kelly behind the prison walls now is the fact that now the world is watching," Brindley wrote at the time. "We will call on the courts and President Trump to help put an end to the corruption that now threatens Mr. Kelly's life." A federal judge denied that request.
The clemency request comes after Kelly largely exhausted his judicial options. In February 2025, a federal appeals court upheld his New York convictions, and later that year the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, leaving his sentence intact.
Kelly's petition arrives amid a surge in clemency applications during Trump's second term. According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department has received thousands of additional pardon and commutation requests since Trump returned to office, with hundreds of new applications added to the federal database in recent weeks.
The president has broad constitutional authority to grant pardons and commute federal sentences. Unlike a pardon, which forgives a federal offense, a commutation shortens or eliminates a prison sentence without overturning the underlying conviction.
Trump has not commented publicly on Kelly's request, and the White House has not indicated whether the president is considering the application. Under Justice Department procedures, clemency petitions can remain pending for months or even years before a decision is made.
