What you need to know about R&B star R Kelly’s trial on s.e.x trafficking

R. Kelly, the disgraced R&B singer facing sex trafficking and racketeering charges in New York. If convicted, Kelly, 54, is looking at decades in prison. In addition to the New York charges, Kelly faces numerous counts of sexual assault and abuse in Illinois. Both sets of legal proceedings were sparked by two decades’ worth of sexual misconduct allegations against Kelly, who was previously acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008.

Here’s what to know about the case.
Kelly is standing trial in the Eastern District of New York over racketeering charges and violations of the Mann Act, which criminalizes sex trafficking across state lines. The charges stem from March 2020, when federal prosecutors in New York outlined them in a superseding indictment that followed charges from the previous year of kidnapping, racketeering, forced labour and sexual exploitation of children.

The federal indictment from July 2019 coincided with another in Illinois that included charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice among its 13 counts. Both indictments arrived mere months after Kelly was charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse on the state level.

The singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, has denied the allegations against him.
Why was the trial delayed?

The trial in Brooklyn federal court was delayed due to the pandemic, as well as the superseding charges that Illinois and New York prosecutors each filed in February and March of last year, respectively.

Opening statements were previously scheduled for Aug. 9, when jury selection took place. But Kelly switched legal teams in July, and his new team requested more time to prepare its defense.

The pandemic also delayed Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago, which will take place after this one. Why is R. Kelly already in jail?

In July 2019, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Kelly be held in jail without bond after a prosecutor argued that if the singer “was attracted to middle school girls in 1999 then he’s still attracted to middle school girls.” Earlier this summer, Kelly was transferred from Chicago to New York for the trial.

When did this all begin?

In 2000, Jim DeRogatis, then a music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, received a tip that Kelly, one of the most successful R&B artists of the 1990s, had a “problem” with young girls. DeRogatis teamed up with Sun-Times legal affairs reporter Abdon Pallasch to investigate the tip, and they discovered multiple lawsuits from the previous decade that accused Kelly of sexually abusing girls.

The superseding indictment from March 2020 added five counts of racketeering and four concerning violations of the Mann Act.

In July, the Associated Press reported that prosecutors claimed Kelly also abused, threatened or mistreated a dozen additional people, including an underage boy. The allegations have not resulted in any additional charges.