Feds slam R. Kelly's 'deeply unserious' murder-plot claim ahead of Friday hearing
R. Kelly’s claim that he’s the target of a prison murder plot is “fanciful,” “deeply unserious” and “makes a mockery of the harm suffered” by victims of the former R&B superstar who turned out to be a “prolific child molester,” a federal prosecutor argued Monday.
Kelly’s bid for temporary release to home detention, the prosecutor added, is “repugnant.”
“Unfortunately, no court has the ability to enter an order freeing Kelly’s victims from the prison that Kelly put them in,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Julien wrote.
Julien made those comments in a 19-page brief Monday that amounts to the most substantive response so far to the extraordinary allegations made last week by Kelly, who is also appealing to President Donald Trump for help.
Not due for freedom until December 2045, Kelly claims that prison officials enlisted a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood to assassinate him to prevent the release of damaging information apparently obtained by the singer’s attorneys.
Kelly asked U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold in Chicago to release him temporarily to home detention. The judge has scheduled a hearing for Friday. But rather than focusing on the merits of Kelly’s claims, the judge seems focused on whether she even has jurisdiction.
Julien insisted in his filing Monday that she does not.
“Imagine a scenario where any and every incarcerated criminal could go back to the criminal court(s) that imposed a sentence of imprisonment upon them, allege that they fear imminent harm, and demand to be released from custody while the matter was investigated,” Julien wrote. “Every convicted murderer, rapist, and terrorist will have a newfound shot at freedom.”
The prosecutor also used the filing to point out Kelly “is a serial child molester whose criminal abuse of children dates back to at least President Clinton’s first term in office — decades before Kelly was taken into federal custody.”
“Kelly has never taken responsibility for his years of sexually abusing children, and he probably never will,” Julien wrote.
The singer’s lawyers also complained last week that Kelly had been moved into solitary confinement after their initial filing, and they wrote that he’d stopped eating the food offered to him out of fear that it had been poisoned.
The fact that prison officials moved Kelly into solitary confinement shows they “are receptive to Kelly’s concerns and interested in keeping Kelly safe,” Julien argued.
The 58-year-old Kelly is being held in a medium-security prison facility in Butner, North Carolina, records show. He’s serving a 30-year sentence there for his 2021 racketeering and sex-crime conviction in New York.
The singer is also serving a mostly simultaneous 20-year sentence for his 2022 child pornography conviction in Chicago.