Prosecutors in Minnesota have decided to drop sex charges against R. Kelly, noting that the disgraced R&B singer has already been sentenced to decades behind bars on two separate federal convictions.
“The overwhelming impact of proceeding to trial in this case on the survivor victim, the community and the Hennepin County legal system would be enormous while a conviction would not add any additional time in prison,” the Hennepin County attorney’s office stated this week.
The Minnesota case was the final pending criminal case against Kelly, who was charged with sex offenses in multiple jurisdictions across the country in 2019. He was found guilty of racketeering by a federal jury in New York in 2021. Last year, he was convicted in Chicago’s federal court on charges of child pornography and sexual conduct with minors. Appeals of the federal convictions are pending.
Earlier this year, Cook County prosecutors dropped their four pending cases against Kelly. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said the office believed strongly that the accusations against Kelly were credible but that the office’s resources would be better spent elsewhere, given that Kelly likely will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The Minnesota charges, brought in August 2019, alleged Kelly solicited a teenage girl who asked him for his autograph in 2001. She approached Kelly at an event in downtown Minneapolis and asked him to sign an autograph for her, prosecutors said at the time.
Kelly also gave her his phone number, and she later went to his hotel suite. He paid her $200 to take off her clothes and dance for him, and the two had some sexual contact, prosecutors said.
In a statement Tuesday, Hennepin County prosecutors said they “continue to believe the victim survivor as to what Mr. Kelly did to her in this case” and believe that Kelly would be convicted if the case went to trial. But that conviction would not add to Kelly’s time in prison, the statement noted.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said Wednesday that she was pleased with the decision to drop the charges.
“It was the right thing to do for a number of reasons,” said Bonjean. “It would have been an enormous waste of resources for the state of Minnesota.”
Bonjean said that while they were happy to not have to defend Kelly against the allegations, his team was “absolutely ready” to go to trial and likely would have prevailed.
“We would have defended that case,” she said. “I don’t think the evidence would have shaken out the way they thought it would.”
Meanwhile, attorney Gloria Allred issued a statement on behalf of the alleged victim in the case, identified only as Jane Doe. It said what Kelly did to her has been weighing heavily on her for more than 20 years and would continue to hurt her for the rest of her life.
“As a surviving victim of R. Kelly, I feel sad about the fact that Hennepin County attorney’s office in Minnesota decided not to hold him accountable for what he did to me when I was a minor,” the statement said. “If there had been a criminal trial, I would have been willing to testify against R. Kelly. Even though it wouldn’t have brought any extra prison time for him, it would have given me closure.”
Kelly, a Chicago native, got his start busking in subway stations before rocketing to fame with hits such as “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Ignition: Remix.”
Allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers dogged him for years, and were first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times more than two decades ago.
Cook County prosecutors in 2002 charged him with child pornography, alleging he filmed himself having sex with his 14-year-old goddaughter. He was acquitted six years later after a bombastic trial during which the victim never testified.
In the years after that, he enjoyed something of a career renaissance, playing the Pitchfork Music Festival in his hometown in 2013 and collaborating with artists such as Lady Gaga and Mariah Carey.
But controversy continued to swirl around him, and came to a head a few years later driven largely by investigative stories by music critic and reporter Jim DeRogatis in BuzzFeed and The New Yorker, as well as damning accusations in the blockbuster Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly.”
After the documentary aired in January 2019, Foxx held an unusual news conference, saying she was “sickened” by the allegations and putting out a public plea for Kelly’s accusers to come forward.
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The Cook County indictments were announced about a month later, and the federal indictments were brought down later that year. The Minnesota case followed about a month afterward.
A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Kelly in 2021 on racketeering conspiracy charges alleging his musical career doubled as a criminal enterprise aimed at satisfying his predatory sexual desires. That case resulted in the 30-year sentence.
The latest conviction came in September in Chicago’s federal courthouse, where Kelly was found guilty of abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter on videotape in the 1990s, as well as sexual misconduct with two other minors around the same time period. The same jury acquitted Kelly on charges that he rigged his 2008 trial.
Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison on that conviction, though U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber ordered that only one year will be served consecutive to his 30-year sentence in New York.
Tribune wires contributed.
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
