CHICAGO — Sentencing for R&B star R. Kelly on his racketeering conviction in New York was postponed Tuesday, but the judge denied a request to wait until after his trial on federal charges in Chicago in August.
Kelly, 54, faces from 10 years to life in prison after being convicted Sept. 27 in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on racketeering conspiracy charges alleging he used his music career to further a criminal enterprise.
He had been scheduled for sentencing on May 4, but in a brief order posted to the docket Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly moved Kelly’s sentencing date to June 16, apparently because a presentence investigation report, which is relied upon in fashioning punishment, was just submitted Tuesday.
Donnelly, however, denied Kelly’s lawyer’s attempt to postpone the sentencing until after his August trial in Chicago, where he’s accused of conspiring with two associates to rig his 2008 child pornography case in Cook County and hide years of alleged sexual abuse of young girls.
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean wrote in a filing last week she has “grave concerns” that going forward with the sentencing, which would include intimate details of Kelly’s background, would interfere with his Fifth Amendment rights in the Chicago case.
Prosecutors said that argument “strains credulity.” Also, a delay would hurt victims who’ve “waited years to see (Kelly) held to account and sentenced for his crimes,” according to prosecutors.
Bonjean told the Tribune on Tuesday she will file a letter asking the judge to reconsider. She said she’s “concerned” by the judge’s refusal to move his sentencing, even though it’s now scheduled for just six weeks before the start of trial in Chicago.
“It’s six weeks and we’re talking about someone who’s facing potentially life in prison,” Bonjean said. “The government seems to be prioritizing the victims’ schedules.”
Kelly, who has been in custody since his arrest in downtown Chicago in July 2019, is currently being held without bond at a federal detention facility in Brooklyn.
A jury found him guilty of 12 individual illegal acts, 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 married.
Bonjean has asked Donnelly to throw out the conviction on myriad legal grounds, including allegations prosecutors misused the RICO statute and that Kelly’s ineffective trial lawyers failed to keep jurors off the panel who had been tainted by what they’d seen or read about Kelly’s sexual exploits.
Bonjean wrote in a brief filed Monday that, under the prosecution’s theory of RICO, former NBC newsman Matt Lauer — who was terminated in 2017 after reports of inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace — and any of the network assistants who facilitated his alleged misconduct would qualify as a criminal enterprise.
Prosecutors last month argued that the evidence of Kelly’s sexual misdeeds was overwhelming and that jurors were properly vetted for any potential bias.
Donnelly is unlikely to grant a new trial to Kelly, but the issues being argued before her telegraph what will eventually be presented to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
