R. Kelly Sent To Medium Security Prison In North Carolina
Now, the last time that R. Kelly was in North Carolina, he was performing in front of thousands of fans inside the Greensboro Coliseum in 2018, amidst a growing cry from protesters urging to cancel the singer for his decades of abuse.
Now, the disgraced entertainer is back in the Tar Heel State… but this time, he’s behind bars.
ABC11 confirmed that Kelly is now listed as an inmate at Butner Medium II Federal Correctional Institute in Granville County as he serves a lengthy prison sentence.
According to its website, Butner Medium II Federal Correctional Institute has 1,475 male inmates.
Legal woes
Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2021, after being found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking. This comes after he has been accused of sexual violence towards women and young girls for over three decades.
Kelly received another 20-year sentence in a Chicago federal trial earlier this year for child sex crimes. However, all but one year will be served concurrently with the NY sentence.
The singer denies all wrongdoing, and his team has recently filed to appeal his sentence.
In all, it looks like the 56-year-old will be locked up well into his 80s.
“No matter what I do, Mr. Kelly isn’t going out the door after today,” Leinenweber said. “He’s not going out the door in the next 10 years, he’s not going out the door in the next 20 years.”
The New York Times reported that one of Kelly’s lawyers argued that the new sentence means the disgraced singer will “likely die in prison.”
Prosecutors initially sought a non-concurrent 25-year sentence. However, Leinenweber believes that Kelly would not be a threat at his advanced age when he is eventually released. “Eighty-year-olds are more interested, not in grooming young women, but on their prostate and other factors that go into the aging process,” he said.
Along with an additional year in prison, the judge also ordered that Kelly pays $42,000 in restitution to one of the victims in the case, known as “Pauline” during the trial. The claims of the other two victims, identified as “Jane” and “Nia,” were denied due to them having settled with Kelly in a civil case.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said earlier that additional time behind bars would be “overkill.”
Kelly was sentenced just about a month after Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx made a seemingly clairvoyant announcement that she intended to drop sex-abuse charges against the disgraced singer.
“Mr. Kelly is potentially looking at the possibility of never walking out of prison again for the crimes that he’s committed,” the Chicago prosecutor said last month, referring to his federal convictions. “While today’s cases are no longer being pursued, we believe justice has been served.”
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