R. Kelly was found guilty of six of the 13 charges brought against him and faces a minimum of five years in prison for each count.
R. Kelly has been found guilty of producing child pornography and luring underage girls into sex acts by a jury in his federal child pornography trial on Sept. 14. The disgraced rapper, 55, was found guilty of six of 13 charges against him, which included “four counts of producing child porn, one of conspiring to obstruct justice by fixing the 2008 trial, one of conspiring to receive child porn, two of actually receiving it and five of enticing minors for sex”, according to NBC New York. U.S. Attorney John Lausch said Kelly will likely be sentenced to between 10 and 90 years in prison, according to TMZ.
One of the charges the father of three was acquitted of is attempting to rig his 2008 state child pornography trial. Prosecutors accused the Ignition rapper of interfering with the trial by paying a teenage girl and her family hush money to prevent her from testifying about a video clip of him allegedly urinating on her during sex. He was found not guilty during the 2008 trial.
Both of R. Kelly’s co-defendants, his ex-business manager Derrell McDavid and former associate Milton Brown, were also found not guilty. Brown had one count of conspiracy to receive child pornography against him, while McDavid had three charges: conspiracy to receive child pornography, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, and two counts of receiving child pornography.
The trial involved more than two dozen witnesses who testified on behalf of the prosecution to prove that R. Kelly used his star power to lure in and intimidate underaged girls into having sexual relations with him, as well as used his resources to cover his tracks, per the Daily Beast. Four of the witnesses were identity-protected women who accused the rapper of sexually abusing them, with one being no more than 14 years old at the time.
The guilty verdict is the second for R. Kelly, who was found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking at his Brooklyn federal trial in 2021. He was sentenced in June to 30 years in prison. “These crimes were calculated and carefully planned and regularly executed for almost 25 years,” Judge Ann M. Donnelly said during his sentencing. “You taught them that love is enslavement and violence.”
The new guilty verdict took place at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago, R. Kelly’s hometown, and began in August. The rapper’s lawyers have not released a statement regarding the six counts for which he was found guilty as of this writing. R. Kelly still faces two impending trials: one in Minnesota and another in Chicago at the state level.
