R. Kelly has been jailed in New York City in anticipation of his sex-trafficking trial later this summer. A federal prison website on Wednesday (June 23) listed Kelly as an inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
He arrived there Tuesday afternoon from Chicago, where he was being held on similar charges. Kelly, 54, is accused of leading an enterprise made up of his managers, bodyguards and other employees who helped him recruit women and girls for sex.
Federal prosecutors say the group selected victims at concerts and other venues and arranged for them to travel to see Kelly. The Grammy Award-winning singer denies ever abusing anyone. His trial is set for Aug. 9.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported on June 7 that two Chicago-based defense lawyers for the disgraced singer who has been behind bars for more than two years, Steve Greenberg and Michael Leonard, asked to withdraw from the case. At the time, Billboard also confirmed that a third lawyer, New Jersey attorney Douglas Anton, is no longer an official part of the team for the New York case.
Kelly is also slated to face trial in his native Chicago on accusations that he filmed himself having sex with underage girls and paying off potential witnesses at his 2008 child pornography trial to get them to change their stories; the singer was acquitted in that trial. Kelly, who has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, has been locked up in Chicago’s downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center since his arrest in July 2019.
