R Kelly’s lawyers are fighting to get him released from jail after claiming his life is in danger.
The American singer and producer, real name Robert Sylvester Kelly, was once credited as ‘the King of R&B’, releasing 18 albums and having over 75 million albums and singles, as well as working on albums by Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber and Mary J. Blige.
He won Grammy, Billboard and American Music Awards, but his career abruptly ended in 2019 following his arrest and subsequent sentencing for racketeering and sex trafficking charges involving the sexual abuse of minors.
Kelly, 58, is currently serving a 31-year combined sentence at a prison in North Carolina.
However, his legal team have now filed an emergency motion calling from his immediate release from federal custody to home detention.
In a filing made on Tuesday, reviewed by Variety, his attorney Beau B. Brindley claims that the team had ‘explicit evidence that officials solicited an inmate to murder him while in custody’.
His counsel provided a sworn declaration from Mikeal Glenn Stine, a terminally ill inmate, who said that officials ‘offered him freedom in his final days in exchange for Kelly’s murder’.
Stine, a member of the neo-Nazi prison gang Aryan Brotherhood, claimed that he was told Kelly and his attorneys were planning to expose damaging information, as with the filing alleging that officials violated attorney-client privilege by intercepting personal correspondence.
He also stated that officials told him he would be charged with Kelly’s murder, but that evidence would be mishandled and there would be no conviction.
After arriving at Kelly’s unit in March, Stine said he was prepared to kill the rapper but changed his mind and ended up telling the rapper that ‘Bureau of Prisons officials directed him to carry out his murder’.
Kelly’s lawyers have claimed that last month they were told a second member of the Aryan Brotherhood who was told by officials to kill both Kelly and Stine.
They have said Kelly is in danger remaining in custody with other members of the Brotherhood.
‘The threat to Mr. Kelly’s life continues each day that no action is taken,’ they wrote in the filing.
‘More A.B. members are accumulating at his facility. More than one has already been approached about carrying out his murder.
‘One of them will surely do what Mr. Stine has not, thereby burying the truth about what happened in this case along with Robert Kelly.’
In 2023 Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison for child sex crimes in Chicago while already serving a 30-year prison sentence over sex trafficking and racketeering charges in New York.
The judge ruled he could serve 19 years at the same time, meaning the child sex crimes only added one year to his existing sentence.
His convictions included three counts of coercing minors into sexual activity and three of producing sex tapes involving a minor.
Metro has contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for comment.
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