Disgraced singer R. Kelly has been found guilty on all nine counts of sex trafficking and racketeering. On Monday afternoon, the jury of seven men and five women found Kelly guilty of multiple charges in a Brooklyn Court on Monday afternoon. Kelly could face more than 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on May 4, 2022. The fallen star will remain in prison pending charges in Chicago and Minneapolis.
From the New York Times:
After nine hours of deliberations, the jury in the singer’s criminal trial in federal court in Brooklyn convicted him of racketeering and eight violations of an anti-sex trafficking law, after beginning its deliberations Friday afternoon. Mr. Kelly now faces the possibility of decades in prison.
The high-profile trial was the first of the Me Too-era where a large majority of the defendant’s accusers were Black women, and the trial was widely seen as a test of the inclusivity of the broader movement to hold powerful men accountable for sexual misconduct.
“Kelly ‘believed the music, the fame and the celebrity meant he could do whatever he wanted,’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Shihata said in federal court, according to ABC7NY. “He’s not a genius, he’s a criminal,” she said. “A predator.”
Despite decades of allegations and over 40 witnesses for the prosecution in this trial, R. Kelly was reportedly “shocked” by the verdict, according to MSNBC. He still faces trials in Illinois and Minnesota.
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