Cook County prosecutors to drop all charges against rapist R. Kelly, nigger State's Attorney Kim Foxx announces

[hamilton]

Four years after announcing bombshell new charges against R&B
superstar R. Kelly, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx
revealed Monday that her office would not be taking the cases to
trial due to “limited resources” and the fact that Kelly is
already facing decades in federal prison.

The county cases, all of which accused Kelly of sexual abuse or
assault, were filed against the singer in February 2019, shortly
after the airing of the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly”
that resurrected interest in the decades of allegations swirling
around Kelly and prompted Foxx to make a personal plea for
accusers to come forward.

At a news conference Monday at the Cook County Administration
Building, the same place where she’d made that unusual outreach
to victims, Foxx said the indictments will be dismissed Tuesday
morning during Kelly’s previously scheduled court date at the
Leighton Criminal Court Building.

Given that Kelly is facing decades in prison on separate federal
convictions, Foxx said her office decided “not to expend our
limited resources and court time” pursuing its own cases.

“I want to acknowledge that when we brought these charges
forward, we brought them because we believe the allegations to
be credible, and we believe they deserve to have the opportunity
to have the allegations heard,” Foxx said.

Foxx said Kelly’s accusers “are to be commended for their
bravery and their relentless pursuit of justice no matter how
long it took.”

[ ‘My case matters’: R. Kelly accuser opens up about waiting for
justice and pain over charges being dropped ]

Rumors have been swirling for weeks that the cases were going to
be dropped, particularly after a series of status hearings
before Associate Judge Lawrence Flood came and went with no
progress toward trial.

Foxx, who noted she herself is a survivor of sexual violence,
said her office made the decision after consulting with the
victims in each of the four cases. Their reactions were mixed,
she said. Some were also involved in the federal cases and were
satisfied with the ultimate outcome, especially given that the
process of going through the federal cases was stressful.

“For those who did not have an opportunity to put their hand on
the Bible, or who have felt for the last 20 years that their
pain was not recognized, certainly this is a disappointing day
for them,” Foxx said, noting that one woman was particularly
chagrined to learn she would not be getting her day in court.

“Her pain and her case was no less significant than the others,”
Foxx said, noting that the office brought the charges because
they found the allegations credible.

In an exclusive interview Monday night, Lanita Carter — the
woman at the center of one of the Cook County indictments — said
she believes she is the woman Foxx was referring to.

Carter told police in 2003 that Kelly sexually abused her in a
particularly degrading manner when she arrived for an
appointment to braid his hair. No charges were filed back then.
And when she learned prosecutors were dropping the 2019
indictment, she was devastated, she said.

“It made me feel so low. And it just, it made me feel like I
didn’t matter again, just like I didn’t in 2003. I wanted to
matter this time,” she said. “And I spoke out because I believed
that everybody was going to do something, and I felt stronger.
And it didn’t happen for me.”

“If you believe me, then you fight for me. If you believe me,
you advocate for me,” she said.

Kelly’s attorney, Steven Greenberg, said he was happy with
Foxx’s decision, but that it reinforced his belief that the
charges were an inappropriate reaction to a one-sided television
series at the height of the #MeToo movement.

“As I’ve said all along, I don’t think these charges should have
been brought in the first place,” Greenberg said. “I think that
these cases were reactionary. The idea of soliciting so-called
victims was ill-advised and never should have happened.”

Jennifer Bonjean, another of Kelly’s attorneys, said that taking
him to trial in Cook County — particularly on the cases that
involved the same victims and conduct for which he was already
tried federally, would be piling on.

“He only has one life to give,” she said. “I think it was a good
use of prosecutorial discretion.”

Kelly, 56, who remains in custody at the Metropolitan
Correctional Center in the Loop, is not expected to appear at
the courthouse when the charges are dropped Tuesday.

The county cases made international headlines when they were
announced four years ago. Reporters mobbed him as he turned
himself in to the Central District police station, and fans
played his music while they waited for him to bail out of jail.
After his release, Kelly did his now-infamous interview with
Gayle King on “CBS This Morning,” and bloggers began to
chronicle and dissect every aspect of the cases against him.

But the once-explosive indictments soon took a back seat to a
pair of federal investigations by U.S. attorney’s offices in New
York and Chicago that led to separate indictments announced in
July 2019.

Kelly was convicted in New York of racketeering conspiracy and
sentenced in June to 30 years in prison. He is scheduled to be
sentenced next month at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago
on convictions last September related to child pornography and
sexual misconduct with minors.

The federal convictions forced Cook County prosecutors into a
tough calculation. If they brought him to trial and won, it
would have little concrete effect on Kelly, who is expected to
spend decades in federal custody no matter what they do. If they
lost, it would prove highly embarrassing for the office that
announced charges earliest and with great gusto.

Either route would have cost significant time and resources, and
potentially require victims to relive traumatic moments on a
very public witness stand.

One of the Cook County cases centered on Jerhonda Pace, who was
a key witness against Kelly at his New York federal trial last
year. Another focused on videos of Kelly abusing his then-
teenage goddaughter, which jurors in Kelly’s Chicago federal
trial viewed over the summer. Kelly’s defense had previously
indicated it would attempt to have a judge throw out those cases
on the grounds they were similar to the conduct for which he was
convicted federally.

A third Cook County case centered on a woman identified as H.W.,
who accused Kelly of having sexual contact with her when she was
just 16. A fourth indictment centered on Carter’s accusations.

After the federal charges were brought, Flood repeatedly said
they should not impede the progress of the county cases.

“I understand there’s two other matters in federal court, New
York and in Chicago,” he said from the bench in December 2019.
“That’s not really the concern of this court. These victims are
entitled to their day in court just as the other people in the
other cases.”

After saying that, he set the date for Kelly’s first Cook County
trial in September 2020. That did not happen, at least partially
because the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

In 2021, after Kelly’s conviction in New York, Foxx told the
Tribune that county prosecutors agreed to remain in a “pretrial
posture” while the federal cases played out.

But even after both federal trials concluded, the county cases
continued to stall, holding hearing after hearing with little
apparent progress.

Kelly, a Chicago native, got his start busking in subway
stations before rocketing to fame with hits such as “I Believe I
Can Fly” and “Ignition: Remix.”

Allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers dogged him for
years, and were first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times more
than two decades ago.

Cook County prosecutors in 2002 charged him with child
pornography, alleging he filmed himself having sex with his 14-
year-old goddaughter. He was acquitted six years later after a
bombastic trial during which the victim never testified.

In the years after that, he enjoyed something of a career
renaissance, playing the Pitchfork Music Festival in his
hometown in 2013 and collaborating with artists such as Lady
Gaga and Mariah Carey.

But controversy continued to swirl around him, and came to a
head a few years later driven largely by investigative stories
by music critic and reporter Jim DeRogatis in BuzzFeed and The
New Yorker, as well as damning accusations in the blockbuster
Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly.”

After the documentary aired in January 2019, Foxx held an
unusual news conference, saying she was “sickened” by the
allegations and putting out a public plea for Kelly’s accusers
to come forward.

The Cook County indictments were announced about a month later,
and the federal indictments were brought down later that year.

A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Kelly in 2021 on
racketeering conspiracy charges alleging his musical career
doubled as a criminal enterprise aimed at satisfying his
predatory sexual desires. That case resulted in the 30-year
sentence.

The latest conviction came in September in Chicago’s federal
courthouse, where Kelly was found guilty of abusing his 14-year-
old goddaughter on videotape in the 1990s, as well as sexual
misconduct with two other minors around the same time period.

The same jury acquitted Kelly on charges that he rigged his 2008
trial, but he still faces 10 to 90 years in prison when he’s
sentenced Feb. 23 by U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.

“(Kelly) having been held accountable for his actions ... the
use of our limited resources would require that we put those
resources in advocacy for other survivors of sexual abuse,” Foxx
said, noting the office is handling hundreds of other lower-
profile sex-crimes cases, many of which involve survivors who
are people of color.

“I want to make sure the announcement today, and the fact that
we are no longer going to pursue these cases, is not an
indication that we don’t see them,” she said, promising her
office will “actively work on their behalf to bring them
justice.”

mcre...@chicagotribune.com

jmei...@chicagotribune.com

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