A federal appeals court has rejected fallen R&B star R. Kelly’s bid to overturn his New York sex trafficking and racketeering conviction.
Kelly, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in June 2022 on racketeering and sex trafficking charges, argued through his attorneys that he didn’t run a racketeering enterprise because his employees didn’t know the age of his young victims and therefore weren’t acting with criminal intent.
In an 85-page decision Wednesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument and kept the guilty verdict against the “I Believe I Can Fly” victim intact.
A Brooklyn Federal Court jury found him guilty in September 2021of one racketeering count and eight Mann Act counts, after a blockbuster trial with testimony from 40 witnesses and 11 accusers. The Mann Act criminalizes transporting people across state lines for immoral purposes.
“The record is replete with evidence that Kelly was able to commit the predicate acts because he was the head of a close-knit group of associates and he controlled the affairs of the enterprise,” Judge Denny Chin wrote, explaining the three-judge panel’s decision. “For instance, members of Kelly’s entourage participated directly in a predicate act when they devised a plan for Kelly to marry Aaliyah when she was underage.”
Kelly’s secret and illegal marriage to late R&B teen phenom Aaliyah in 1994, when she was 15 and he was 27, unnerved some of his staunchest allies.