R. Kelly, an American musician and sex offender who is currently incarcerated, has challenged one of his two federal convictions (his September 2021 guilty verdicts on sex trafficking) charges in New York and called for the judgment to be overturned or for a new trial.
Jennifer Bonjean, the rapper’s legal representative, submitted the appeal on behalf of her client. It should be remembered that the singer of “Sign of Victory” was sentenced to 30 years in prison after a jury in his 2021 federal trial in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn found him guilty on all counts of racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, and abduction.
Kelly’s attorneys contend in a brief submitted on Wednesday, April 20, 2023, that at least four jurors in the New York case were previously acquainted with the allegations of sex trafficking brought before him to trial, with several having seen a documentary series about him.
The brief explained, “Numerous seated jurors were either familiar with accusations that Defendant had a history of sexually abusing underage girls, had previously faced legal problems, and/or had seen the highly unflattering docuseries, Surviving R. Kelly, in which several government witnesses had appeared.”
Kelly’s legal team also claimed in the document that certain allegations about his life, such as testimony from seven additional witnesses who “detailed defendant’s unusual and graphic sexual activities, his history of transmitting herpes to his sex partners, his abusive behavior toward his girlfriends, and both audio and video-recordings of this conduct with women and men,” should not have been submitted and prevented him from getting a fair trial. According to the petition, some of the minor girls listed in his trial deceived him about their actual ages, while others turned out to be 18 years old.
Kelly was charged by prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York of using his famous status and “network of people at his disposal to target girls, boys, and young women for his own sexual gratification.” R. Kelly, meanwhile, was sentenced to an additional 20 years in prison earlier this year in a federal courthouse in Chicago after being found guilty in 2022 of child pornography and enticing a juvenile.
