Two weeks after R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex trafficking and racketeering charges, the disgraced R&B singer returned on Tuesday to a federal jail in his hometown of Chicago before his trial on child pornography and obstruction of justice charges, according to the Chicago Tribune.
In 2002, Kelly was initially indicted in Illinois state court on 21 counts of child pornography, but six years later he was acquitted by a jury.
From the Chicago Tribune:
Kelly faces yet another legal hurdle as jury selection is set to begin Aug. 15 at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where he is accused of conspiring with two former associates to rig his 2008 child pornography case in Cook County and hide years of alleged sexual abuse of underage girls.
Four other indictments alleging sexual abuse by Kelly brought in Cook County in February 2019 have yet to be scheduled for trial.
In September 2021, the singer was convicted on one charge of racketeering and eight counts of violation of the Mann Act, a federal sex-trafficking law that criminalizes “the transportation of ‘any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.’”
Weeks after his sentencing, Kelly and his attorney let a federal court know they plan to appeal his conviction on racketeering charges but did not share the specifics on what grounds Kelly wants to challenge the verdict and 30-year prison sentence.
On Monday, one of Kelly’s alleged victims, Joycelyn Savage, claimed to be engaged to the Chicago singer in a letter to Judge Ann Donnelly before Kelly’s sentencing hearing. Also in the letter, she asked the judge for leniency in her sentencing of Kelly claiming he’s “an all-around incredible person.”
Three years ago in 2019, Savage claimed that she was a victim of Kelly and shared disturbing details of her abuse through Patreon, an online subscription service. Savage’s parents claim that their daughter never let them know about the engagement and they “strongly doubt” the story is even true.