Singer R Kelly faces up to 25 years in jail for racketeering and sex trafficking
Wednesday, 29 June 2022 (14:59 IST)
Washington: Disgraced American R&B singer R Kelly will face the day of reckoning as a US federal judge will on Wednesday will set the quantum of sentence for him nearly a year after he was convicted of leading a decades-long effort to recruit and trap teenagers and women for sex, Khaleej Times reported.
Prosecutors have urged the court to sentence the artist best known for his song "I Believe I Can Fly" to a prison term of atleast 25 years, saying he still "poses a serious danger to the public."
In September last, a jury in Brooklyn federal court found singer guilty on all nine charges he faced, including the most serious of racketeering.
Kelly's legal team have urged a lighter sentence with a maximum of approximately 17 years. Kelly is currently incarcerated in Brooklyn awaiting his fate.
Jury selection in Kelly's separate, long-delayed federal trial in Chicago is meanwhile scheduled to begin August 15.
In that case, Kelly and two of his former associates are alleged to have rigged the singer's 2008 pornography trial and hid years of sexual abuse of minors.
The musician who once dominated R&B also faces prosecution in two other state jurisdictions.
Kelly's conviction in New York was widely seen as a milestone for the #MeToo movement: it was the first major sex abuse trial where the majority of accusers were Black women.
It was also the first time Kelly faced criminal consequences for the abuse he for decades was rumoured to have inflicted on women and children.
Prosecutors were tasked with proving Kelly guilty of racketeering, a federal charge commonly associated with organized crime syndicates that depicted Kelly as the boss of an enterprise of associates who facilitated his abuse. (UNI)
