R. Kelly’s legal team has made their push for a commuted sentence official after previously calling on Trump to “help” them.
As first reported by the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday (July 14), Kelly’s request centers on a hopeful commutation of the singer’s sentence, i.e., not an outright pardon. The “I Believe I Can Fly” artist is currently behind bars at a medium-security federal correctional institution in Butner, North Carolina, where he’s eyeing a release date of Jan. 31, 2046.
Per an Office of the Pardon Attorney listing viewed by Complex, Kelly does indeed have a clemency case, filed this year, listed as “pending.” This means Kelly’s case “has been opened and the petition is under review,” according to the Pardon Attorney. As is policy, however, additional information on the review process has not been publicly shared.
At a press conference in June of last year, Beau Brindley, Kelly’s attorney, then fresh off filing an emergency motion alleging that his client faced imminent danger while behind bars, specifically mentioned Trump while further detailing his argument in support of an immediate release.
“R. Kelly's life is now threatened, because of his willingness to fight and to expose the very kind of corruption that President Trump has been fighting and standing up to since the day he took that office,” Brindley said at the time, adding that he would be be asking “Trump to help us.”.
In 2021, Kelly was convicted in New York of charges including racketeering and sex trafficking, followed in 2022 by a child pornography conviction in Chicago. For the New York conviction, he was given 30 years behind bars, while the Chicago verdict led to another 20 years, the bulk of which is being served concurrently with the former.
Throughout continued coverage of Kelly’s post-sentencing allegations of mistreatment while incarcerated, a false claim of him being released from prison has repeatedly made the rounds on social media. As a reminder, it was false then and remains so now.
