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State charges against disgraced rapper R. Kelly have been dropped, a Chicago prosecutor announced on Monday – a decision she admitted would be ‘disappointing’ to his accusers.
Kim Foxx made her announcement on the eve of a hearing in the state case, in which the 56-year-old is accused sexually abusing four people, three of whom were minors.
Foxx said she appreciated her decision was controversial, given she had actively sought out his victims and encouraged them to press charges.
But, she noted, the Chicago-born singer is still behind bars, having been found guilty on federal charges in New York and Illinois.
Prosecutors sometimes choose to go ahead with more trials out of a concern that convictions elsewhere could be reversed during appeals. They see an opportunity for additional convictions as insurance.
‘We didn’t do a monetary cost-benefit analysis,’ Foxx said, adding, however, that resources spent on a trial now could instead be used ‘in advocacy for other survivors of sexual abuse.’
R. Kelly is seen in September 2019 in the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago. He was due in court in Chicago on Tuesday for a hearing on state charges, but those charges were dropped on Monday
Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney, is seen on Monday announcing that charges were being dropped
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is serving a 30-year prison sentence in the New York case and awaits sentencing on February 23 in Chicago federal court.
He is appealing those convictions.
Based on the New York sentence alone, he will not be eligible for release until he is around 80.
Foxx said she would ask a judge to dismiss the indictments Tuesday.
‘Mr. Kelly is potentially looking at the possibility of never walking out of prison again for the crimes that he’s committed,’ the prosecutor said, referring to his federal convictions.
‘While today’s cases are no longer being pursued, we believe justice has been served.’
Since Kelly was indicted in Cook County in 2019, federal juries in Chicago and New York have convicted him of a raft of crimes, including child pornography, enticement, racketeering and sex trafficking related to allegations that he victimized women and girls.
Kelly is seen in May 2019 leaving the Daley Center in Chicago after a hearing in his child support case. The 56-year-old is currently serving a 30-year sentence after a New York court found him guilty of sexually abusing young girls
Kelly is seen with R&B star Aaliyah in 1994, who he married when she was just 15
Foxx said she reached out to Kelly’s lawyer two weeks ago to indicate that charges might be dropped.
She also spoke to the women whose allegations were at the heart of the case.
Foxx expressed praise for the ‘courage it took for them to come forward.’
Another sexual-misconduct case is pending in Hennepin County, Minnesota, where the Grammy Award-winner faces solicitation charges.
That case, too, has been on hold while the federal cases played out.
Minnesota prosecutors have not said whether they still intend to take Kelly to trial.
Known for his smash hit ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ and for sex-infused songs such as ‘Bump n’ Grind,’ Kelly sold millions of albums even after allegations about his abuse of young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s.
Allegations that Kelly abused young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s. He was sued in 1997 by a woman who alleged sexual battery and sexual harassment while she was a minor
He beat child pornography charges in Chicago in 2008, when a jury acquitted him.
Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct did not emerge until the #MeToo reckoning and the release of the Lifetime docuseries ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ in early 2019.
Foxx announced the Cook County charges months before the federal cases in New York and Chicago.
Foxx’s office alleged he repeatedly sought out girls for sex, including one he encountered at her 16th birthday party and another who met Kelly while he was on trial in 2008.
Federal prosecutors in New York told jurors at his 2021 trial that Kelly used his entourage of managers and aides to meet girls and keep them obedient, an operation that prosecutors said amounted to a criminal enterprise.
Last year, prosecutors at Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago portrayed him as a master manipulator who used his fame and wealth to reel in star-struck fans, some of them minors, to sexually abuse then discard them. Four accusers testified.
While prosecutors in that case won convictions on six of the 13 counts against him in that case, the government lost the marquee count – that Kelly and his then-business manager successfully rigged his 2008 child pornography trial.
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