R. Kelly doesn’t have freedom, money for this legal battle
CHICAGO — The difference between R. Kelly’s life in 2002 when he was last charged with child sex-related crimes and his arrest last week on even more serious charges was on full display when the R&B singer turned and slowly walked out of court.
Each step Tuesday was cut shorter than normal by the shackles around his ankles — a reminder of how small his world has become and how the advantages he once possessed have vanished. He was not posting bond and leaving by the front door to return to his life as an international recording artist as he did 17 years ago. He was heading back to a federal jail cell knowing there’s a good chance he will stay there for months or even years before his case comes to trial, after a judge said the charges against him are too serious to release him on bond.
In the space of an hour, a federal prosecutor and Kelly’s own lawyer outlined many of the ways the 52-year-old singer’s life has changed. When he eventually went to trial in on child pornography charges in 2008, his lawyers convinced a jury that Kelly was not guilty and prosecutors couldn’t prove that it was Kelly or a certain 14- yearold girl in a grainy sex video.
“You are almost better off asking what’s not different for him, the situation is like night and day,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago. “R. Kelly is now facing an array of challenges that he wasn’t facing years ago and the resources the federal government can bring to bear far exceed anything he faced in state court.”
For starters, the federal prosecutors in New York and Chicago and the FBI agents who have been working on the case are among the most experienced law enforcement officials in the world. “He’s facing a team of agents used to putting together complex, challenging cases against well-funded defendants,” he said. “They did the El Chapo case,” he said, referring to the federal probe that led to the conviction in New York of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the wealthiest and most powerful drug lords in the world.
And unlike often financially strapped state prosecutors, the U. S. Attorney’s office and the FBI won’t be outspent, he said.
The federal indictments in New York and Chicago accuse Kelly of kidnapping and coercing women and girls into having sex, producing and receiving child pornography, i nducing minors to engage in sexual activity, and taking part in a conspiracy worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover up sex crimes going back decades. Kelly, who has been in jail since Friday, was arrested on state sexual abuse and sexual assault charges involving three minors and one woman over roughly a 10-year period.