Popular American R&B singer R. Kelly alongside thirty-nine other inmates have reportedly contracted COVID-19 while awaiting sentencing in a Brooklyn federal jail in the city of New York.
The troubled singer’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, revealed this in a court filing early Tuesday while asking for a two-week extension.
“The singer’s diagnosis has hampered his ability to speak on the phone about his appeal of his conviction. It is vitally important that Mr. Kelly meaningfully participate in his post-trial defense,” Bonjean wrote in the motion, saying she hoped to communicate with him in an upcoming Zoom call.
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Kelly, 54, was convicted on Sept. 27 for racketeering conspiracy charges, alleging that he used his music career to further a criminal enterprise. The jury found him guilty of 12 individual illegal acts, including s3x with multiple underage girls as well as a 1994 scheme to bribe an Illinois public aid official to get a phony ID for 15-year-old singer Aaliyah so the two could get married.
The singer also is charged in U.S. District Court in Chicago with running years long scheme to buy back s3x tapes he allegedly made with underage girls and to bribe or coerce witnesses in his 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County, which ended in acquittal. U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber has set a trial for August in that case.
R.vKelly may likely face up to 10 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced in May.
