(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced Monday that her office will not pursue four sex abuse cases pending against R&B star R. Kelly.
Lawyers for Kelly had called for the state-level cases to be dropped since Kelly was indicted in a pair of federal court jurisdictions more than two years ago.
“The Cook County state’s attorney will no longer be pursuing these indictments,” Foxx said at an afternoon news conference.
Kelly, who turned 56 this month, was convicted in both federal jurisdictions while the state cases remained pending, and is currently serving a 30-year sentence for sex trafficking charges in New York.
When he is sentenced in the Chicago federal case in February, he will likely face another multi-decade prison term.
“He has only one life to give,” said Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean “Given the amount of time he’s already facing, it would seem to be a bad use of prosecutorial resources to continue with these cases.”
Foxx’s office was the first jurisdiction to file criminal charges against Kelly in the wake of uproar that followed the January 2019 airing of the “Surviving R.
Kelly” documentary series on Lifetime network, which brought new attention to sexual abuse allegations against the singer.
Since Kelly’s guilty verdict on three of 13 counts in September, prosecutors in the state cases have asked Judge Lawrence Flood several times for time to review records in the federal cases and consult with victims.
The state cases involve four women who claim they were victims of abuse by the singer in the 1990s or early 2000s. Three of the alleged victims were minors at the time of the abuse, and two of them already have testified against Kelly in his federal trials.
One victim, identified in charging documents as “R.L.” testified that she was 14 when she began performing sex acts with the singer, and that she and her parents lied to protect Kelly when police and child welfare authorities launched investigations in the early 2000s. Now 37, the woman testified under the pseudonym “Jane” at Kelly’s Chicago trial, and said Kelly urged her and her parents not to cooperate with those investigations, which led to indictment in Cook County on state child pornography charges in 2002.
Kelly went on to be acquitted of those charges at trial in 2008, but his attempts to silence witnesses in that case and conceal video tapes showing him having sex with minors, formed the basis of the Chicago federal charges.
Foxx has faced withering criticism and national condemnation for her handling of charges against another celebrity defendant, Jussie Smollett, who was accused of faking a hate crime attack on himself.
The Smollett case would dog Foxx’s administration for years, with a special prosecutor issuing a scathing report on the office — though they found no illegal conduct by Foxx and her staff — and then filing new charges against Smollett for lying to police about the attack.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire & Chicago Sun-Times 2023. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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