Convicted sex offender R. Kelly was tossed the book by U.S. prosecutors who are aggressively trying to ensure the former 90s and 2000s pop star spends the rest of his life behind bars.
Kelly, previously convicted of producing child pornography and enticing minors for sex, is already serving a 30-year sentence in New York for those charges. Federal prosecutors in Chicago are now recommending another 25 years be added on when that time is served for the same offenses.
If a Chicago judge sides with the prosecution, the despicable, disgraced Kelly wouldn’t be eligible for release until he turned 100. He is currently 56 years old.
Filing their sentencing recommendation, federal prosecutors used words and phrases like “sadistic,” “a serial sexual predator” who has not shown remorse and who “poses a serious danger to society.”
A consecutive sentence is eminently reasonable given the egregiousness of Kelly’s conduct,” the filing continued. “Kelly’s sexual abuse of minors was intentional and prolific.”
Indeed, as Breitbart wrote of the more recent Chicago trial, the U.S. government alleged that Kelly took advantage of his own fame to entice fans into his circle, only to sexually abuse them and ultimately “discard them.”
“Prosecutors at Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago portrayed him as a master manipulator who used his fame and wealth to reel in star-struck fans to sexually abuse, in some cases to video record them, and then discard them,” the news outlet reported.
“The only way to ensure Kelly does not reoffend is to impose a sentence that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life,” the filing explained.
Naturally, Kelly’s legal team lacks few real options. A jury of his peers found him guilty on several counts of illicit sexual deviance, and the federal case likewise hinges on the same evidence. Rather than dispute the charges at face value, the defense is arguing that Kelly’s race and troubled childhood should be exculpatory factors.
Kelly’s defense argued that he “was singled out for behavior that she said white rock stars have gotten away with for decades,” Breitbart wrote. It is unclear if the defense actually provided examples to support those claims.
In addition to highlighting his race, Kelly’s defense is also trying to use a childhood alleged to have included abuse as well as the condition of childhood and adult illiteracy to justify a more lenient sentence. It is again unclear how being illiterate excuses someone from the unjustifiable moral crime of producing child pornography.
Kelly “is not an evil monster but a complex (unquestionably troubled) human-being who faced overwhelming challenges in childhood that shaped his adult life,” his legal team argued.
As if this defense couldn’t reflect more poorly on the legal community, the defense added another layer of absurdity, claiming that the man seated before the judge today is not the same man that committed those crimes decades ago. You don’t say.
“While Kelly was not a child in the late 1990s, he also was not the middle-aged man he was at the time of his 2019 indictment,” his team argued. “Kelly was a damaged man in his late 20s.” What’s more, the former billionaire is now apparently “destitute,” which is meant to convey the idea he has already paid a high price for his crimes.
Sentencing is set for next week.
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