NEW YORK — Disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly says he’s a victim of the #MeToo movement and wants a New York appeals court to toss his Brooklyn conviction or give him a new trial.
Kelly says his Brooklyn case that resulted in his 30-year sentence should be retried based on jurors who admitted seeing “Surviving R Kelly,” the docuseries that brought rampant sexual abuse allegations to light, among other arguments.
“Galvanized by an influential social movement determined to punish centuries of male misbehavior through symbolic prosecutions of high-profile men, the government brought a [federal racketeering] prosecution against the Defendant that was ‘absurdly remote’ from the drafters’ intent,” reads the brief filed this week by Kelly’s attorneys.
“This case was not about an enterprise; it was about the conduct of one man who the government sought to punish for his alleged history of mistreating women,” the brief later reads.
A jury convicted Kelly, 56 — who sold over 75 million records at his peak and won three Grammy awards — of one racketeering count and eight Mann Act counts in September 2021 for a decades-long sexual abuse scheme targeting young female fans and some boys. Several were minors.
At sentencing, Judge Ann Donnelly said Kelly mercilessly ruined the lives of young fans he serially raped, abused and isolated “with regularity for almost 25 years.”
“This case is not about sex. It’s about violence and cruelty and control,” Donnelly said in June. “These victims were disposable to you. You taught them that love is enslavement and violence and humiliation.”
Jurors heard grueling testimony from than 40 witnesses, among them 11 accusers,during the trial about how the once-beloved “I Believe I Can Fly” singer beat girls and women with shoes, cords or his fists and delivered vicious spankings that left bruises when they broke his rules behind the imposing gates of his mansion in the Chicago suburbs.
They also heard how he controlled what his victims said, ate, and wore and about his marriage to late R&B singer Aaliyah when she was 15 and he was 27.
Kelly received another two decades in prison in January, to be served concurrently, after his second conviction last year in Chicago on charges related to child pornography and enticement of minors for sex.
His lawyers argued Kelly was unfairly “swamped” by a “mountain of bad act evidence” at his Brooklyn trial about his “unusual and graphic sexual activities” and “history of transmitting herpes,” among other arguments.
The singer’s lawyers said it wasn’t fair of prosecutors to show jurors disturbing video footage of a victim “who was naked and crying, walking back and forth, calling herself a ‘slut’ and ‘stupid’ while [Kelly] looked on.”
Kelly said the horrific scenes had nothing to do with proving he ran an ongoing criminal enterprise, as was required to secure his conviction.
“(The) government admitted a video of Anna spreading feces on her naked body and calling (Kelly) ‘daddy’ although (Kelly) was not depicted in the video,” reads the brief.
“This video, like the others, added nothing to the equation as it relates to proving an enterprise and did not thing but breed contempt for ... (Kelly).”
Kelly is demanding an order that he pays $360,000 in restitution to two victims he infected with Herpes be vacated and that he be returned $28,000 seized from his inmate trust account.
Kelly’s lawyer declined comment.
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