Foxx won’t pursue four sex abuse cases pending against R&B star R. Kelly

Four years after filing the first in what became a wave of criminal charges against R. Kelly, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced Monday her office will no longer pursue four pending sex abuse cases against the Chicago-born R&B star.

Foxx, who years ago took the rare step of holding a press conference asking women who had been assaulted by the singer to come forward, told reporters Monday her office would not expend resources to prosecute Kelly. Months after his indictment in Cook County, federal prosecutors in Chicago and New York brought separate cases against the singer.

Kelly, who turned 56 this month, is serving a 30-year sentence on racketeering and other charges for which he was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn in 2021 and is set to be sentenced in February following his conviction last year on federal charges in Chicago. Federal prosecutors have said Kelly faces a sentence of 10 to 90 years.

Foxx said the lengthy prison terms, and the fact that several of the alleged victims in the Cook County cases were able to testify against Kelly in federal court, prompted the decision not to pursue the state prosecutions. Foxx acknowledged at least one of the victims had told the office they were disappointed with the decision not to move ahead with a trial for Kelly.

“Mr. Kelly is potentially looking at the possibility of never walking out of prison again for the crimes that he has committed,” Foxx said. “While today’s cases are no longer being pursued, we believe justice has been served.”

Prosecutors will ask to drop the charges at a hearing Tuesday before Judge Lawrence Flood. Kelly, housed at the federal Metropolitan Correction Center in Chicago while awaiting federal sentencing, will not attend the hearing, his lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said.

Foxx emphasized that the decision not to prosecute the cases does not mean the allegations against the singer weren’t credible.

Foxx’s office was the first jurisdiction to file criminal charges against Kelly amid the uproar that followed the January 2019 airing of “Surviving R. Kelly,” a documentary series that brought new attention to sexual abuse allegations against the singer. Kelly spent several days in Cook County jail while pulling together cash to cover his $1 million bond, but soon after was arrested on federal charges outside his downtown apartment.

Dropping the charges was not unexpected. Kelly’s lawyers have called for the Cook County charges to be dropped. Soon after the state charges were filed, he was indicted on federal charges involving some of the same alleged victims — which is common in criminal cases. Foxx said her office had conferred with victims and reviewed records and evidence in Kelly’s two federal trials, and acknowledged one of the four women had not had the opportunity for her day in court. (All the women were identified by their initials in court records.)

That woman would appear to be a hair stylist identified in charging documents as “L.C.,” who has since come forward publicly as Lanita Carter. Carter told The New York Times the singer sexually assaulted and spit on her in 2003 after she went to his home for a hair braiding appointment. The case was the most recent of the four brought by Cook County prosecutors, and the only one that did not involve a victim who was not a minor at the time of the assault.

One victim, identified in charging documents as “R.L.” was at the center of both Kelly’s 2008 trial in state child pornography charges, and the federal trial in Chicago last year, which focused on Kelly’s attempt to tamper with witnesses and hide evidence more than a decade before.

Now 37, the woman testified under the pseudonym “Jane” at Kelly’s Chicago trial, and said Kelly had begun sexually abusing her when she was 14. When police and child welfare authorities investigated reports of abuse in the early 2000s, Kelly urged her and her parents not to cooperate and sent her and her parents on a weeks-long trip.

Kelly went on to be acquitted of those charges at trial in 2008, but his attempts to silence witnesses in that case and conceal video tapes showing him having sex with minors, formed the basis of the Chicago federal charges.

Foxx has faced withering criticism and national condemnation for her handling of charges against another celebrity defendant, Jussie Smollett, who was accused of faking a hate crime attack on himself. The Smollett case would dog Foxx’s administration for years, with a special prosecutor issuing a scathing report on the office — though they found no illegal conduct by Foxx and her staff — and then filing new charges against Smollett for lying to police about the attack.