A date has been set for the federal trial of singer R. Kelly in Chicago on child pornography and allegations of obstruction on Tuesday, but even the judge said the date “was not set in stone,” given the pandemic delays that continue to plague. obstructs the court. .
U.S. District Court Judge Harry Leinenweber has set Kelly’s trial set for Sept. 13, five months after another federal trial Kelly has in New York.
Prosecutors in the northern Illinois district told Leinenweber they would need three weeks to file evidence against Kelly, who faces charges that he and two former employees conspired to repair his state trial. Cook County since 2008, on charges of child pornography, paying witnesses and victims. to get them to change their stories.
Mr Kelly is also scheduled to stand trial on April 7 in New York on racketeering charges. In this case, an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn claims that Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, and his associates, ran a criminal enterprise that recruited women and underage girls for illegal sexual contact and then isolated them. threatens to keep them. it controls them and prevents them from going to the authorities.
If convicted in New York, Mr. Kelly faces up to 20 years in prison. Chicago’s federal charges have the potential to add several more decades in prison, and Kelly also faces state criminal abuse charges filed in Chicago in February 2019.
Kelly, 53, has been detained at the Chicago Metropolitan Federal Correctional Center since his arrest in July 2019. Since then, his lawyer, Steven Greenberg, has unsuccessfully filed at least six arguments for Kelly’s release. invoking the danger of the coronavirus and an attack on Kelly during the summer by another prisoner, a member of the gang on Latin Kings Street, who was later sentenced to life in prison on a missile-free conviction.
Most cases in federal court in Chicago were stopped in the spring, but jury trials resumed in August with new security protocols. Even so, Leinenweber said the federal court in Chicago will not be able to host a trial with three defendants with these protocols in place.