R. Kelly alleges that he was put on suicide watch as a kind of punishment last week after a judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison for sexually assaulting underage girls. However, federal authorities have refuted this assertion.
Following a psychological evaluation, the disgraced R&B superstar is still under suicide watch “for his own safety,” according to court documents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, had filed a lawsuit Friday alleging prison officials placed Kelly on suicide watch at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center ‘solely for punitive purposes and because of his status as a high-profile inmate.’
Bonjean argued that the measure was in violation of Kelly’s Eighth Amendment rights as he had no thoughts of harming himself.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Melanie Speight rejected the claims on Saturday, arguing that Kelly’s ‘current life circumstances undoubtedly bring emotional distress.’
‘He is a convicted sex offender who has been sentenced to spend the next three decades in prison,’ Speight wrote in a court filing.
‘In the immediate future, he faces another federal criminal trial in Chicago for charges related to child pornography.’
The filing added that Kelly is ongoing psychological care and his status is evaluated daily.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has been under heightened scrutiny since financier Jeffrey Epstein killed himself behind bars in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges he sexually abused girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.
Kelly, 55, didn’t give a statement and showed no reaction upon hearing his sentence, which also included a $100,000 fine.
He was placed on suicide watch on Friday, and his attorney filed a lawsuit hours later.
‘Nothing occurred during sentencing that came as a surprise to Mr. Kelly,’ Bonjean wrote in the suit.
‘R. Kelly is not suicidal. He was in fine spirits after his sentencing hearing and ready to fight this appeal,’
‘MDC has a policy of placing high profile individuals under the harsh conditions of suicide watch whether they are suicidal or not. MDC Brooklyn is being run like a gulag,’ Bonjean added.
The Grammy-winning, multi platinum-selling songwriter was found guilty last year of racketeering and sex trafficking.
He has denied wrongdoing, and plans to appeal his conviction.
On June 29, Judge Ann M. Donnelly handed down Kelly’s 30-year sentence in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Kelly was convicted of sex-trafficking and racketeering charges last September following a six-week trial that amplified the accusations.
The ‘I Believe I Can Fly Singer’ allegedly committed the heinous acts for decades before he was convicted.
Kelly declined to speak at his sentences after the court heard accusations from angered victims about how the singer preyed on them.
Aside from his 30 year sentence, he must also pay a $100,000 fine. It’s unclear where Kelly will spend his sentence.
Donnelly told Kelly he created ‘a trail of broken lives,’ adding that ‘the most seasoned investigators will not forget the horrors your victims endured.’
‘These crimes were calculated and carefully planned and regularly executed for almost 25 years,’ she said. ‘You taught them that love is enslavement and violence.’
Kelly, who declined to speak at his sentencing, learned of his fate after some of his accusers told the court, through tears and anger, that he had preyed on them and misled his fans. He was also was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, has been detained at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his trial. It has not been revealed where Kelly would spend his sentence.
Lizzette Martinez, one of the victims who spoke earlier at the hearing last week, said she doesn’t think Kelly’s sentence is enough ‘but [was] pleased with it.’
Martinez, who described herself to the reporters as an ‘up-and-coming singer, a girl full of life’ before she met R Kelly and became ‘a sex slave.’
The sentence caps a slow-motion fall for Kelly, who was adored by legions of fans and sold millions of albums even after allegations about his abuse of young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s.
Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t come until the #MeToo reckoning, reaching a crescendo after the release of the docuseries ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’
Kelly’s lawyers had argued he should get no more than 10 years in prison because he had a traumatic childhood ‘involving severe, prolonged childhood sexual abuse, poverty, and violence.’
As an adult with ‘literacy deficiencies,’ the star was ‘repeatedly defrauded and financially abused, often by the people he paid to protect him,’ his lawyers said.
The public was first made aware of Kelly’s alleged abuse of underage girls in the 1990s. He was sued in 1997 by a lady who claimed that he had molested and harassed her while she was a teenager, and in Chicago, he later came up against criminal child pornography accusations involving a different girl. In 2008, a jury there found him not guilty, and he later resolved the claim.
However, the jury last year found the “I Believe I Can Fly” hitmaker guilty after hearing about how he met ladies and utilised his entourage of managers and assistants to keep them submissive, an activity that the prosecution claimed constituted a criminal enterprise.
Kelly was accused by several people of subjecting underage victims to bizarre and brutal impulses.
The accusers claimed they were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements and were threatened with punishments like harsh spankings if they disobeyed what one called “Rob’s rules.”
Some claimed they were afraid that if they revealed what was going on, the videotapes he made of them having sex would be used against them.
According to testimony, Kelly forced a teenage boy to participate in sex with a naked girl who emerged from underneath a boxing ring in his garage, gave several accusers herpes without disclosing he had an STD, and made a humiliating video of one victim in which she smeared faeces on her face as punishment for disobeying him.
Evidence was also provided on a fraudulent marriage scam Kelly concocted to shield himself after he believed he had impregnated R&B superstar Aaliyah in 1994 when she was only 15 years old.
Witnesses claimed they wed while wearing similar jogging suits and a fake marriage licence that claimed she was 18 and he was 27.
Aaliyah worked with Kelly, who wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number.’ She died in a plane crash in 2001 at age 22.
The abuse continued for years while Kelly continued to sell millions of albums.