Chicago prosecutor dropping R. Kelly sex abuse charges as singer serves long sentence

A Chicago prosecutor said Monday that she’s dropping sex-abuse charges against singer R. Kelly, following federal convictions in two courts that ensure the disgraced R&B star will be locked up for decades.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced the decision a day ahead of a court hearing related to state charges accusing him of sexually abusing four people, three of whom were minors.

She acknowledged that the decision “may be disappointing” to women who stepped up to accuse Kelly of crimes.

“Mr. Kelly is looking at the possibility of never walking out of prison again,” Foxx said. “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.

Case pending in Minnesota

Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is serving a 30-year prison sentence in the New York case and awaits sentencing on Feb. 23 in Chicago federal court. He is appealing those convictions.

Based on the New York sentence alone, the 56-year-old won’t be eligible for release until he is around 80.

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 haven’t said whether they still intend to take Kelly to trial.

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.

Known for his smash hit I Believe I Can Fly and for 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. He beat child pornography charges in Chicago in 2008, when a jury acquitted him.

Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t emerge until the #MeToo reckoning and the release of the Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly.

Prosecutors portrayed singer as master manipulator

After that series aired in early 2019, Foxx pleaded with accusers to come forward so that prosecutors could pursue charges.

She announced the Cook County indictment 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 the R&B star 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.