Defense attorneys argued that Kelly should be sentenced to 10 years or less, saying that more than that would be “greater than necessary”. Kelly is being held in a federal detention center in Brooklyn and once convicted, he is expected to be transferred back to Chicago where he faces another federal lawsuit in August on child pornography and obstruction charges.

Child trauma

In more than 14 hours of interviews with psychiatrists, Kelly said that his closest relationship when he was growing up was with his mother. His first memories were watching his mom play as a singer in a band called “Six Pack”, and he often accompanied her to McDonald’s where he drank coffee and shared a dessert. He had never met his father and described his mother’s death as the most tragic event of his life, saying he often went to McDonald’s to smell the coffee and remember it, according to a letter from Renee Sorrentino, a clinical Assistant Professor at Harvard. Medical School. “For me, ‘M’ means mom. Going to McDonald’s is always close to my mother,” Kelly said. But his childhood was also marked by injuries. Kelly saw his childhood love drown out when he was a little boy. And many interviewed by psychiatrists say Kelly has repeatedly been sexually abused starting with a six- or seven-year-old boy, his lawyer wrote, saying he was abused by his older sister and also an owner, occasionally in a “weekly base.” Sorrentino said in her letter that Kelly’s child sexual abuse may have contributed to his “hypersexuality” or difficulty in controlling his sexual urges and that he believed it was a factor in his criminal convictions. While Kelly was convicted of sexually abusing a child, Sorrentino said she refused to diagnose Kelly with pedophilia because he told her that “his sexual behavior never affected pre-adolescents.”

Nine months after his conviction, Kelly replaced his entire legal team with Jennifer Bonjean and her company, the lawyer who helped Bill Cosby overturn his conviction for sexual assault and most recently, represented Cosby in a policy case he lost in the trial earlier this month. Prosecutors say Kelly “took children and young women for his sexual gratification” for nearly 30 years with the help of his inner circle and that he must now be held accountable. Bonjean writes that the prosecutor’s request to imprison the singer for more than 25 years would be equivalent to life imprisonment for the 55-year-old singer. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor who has prosecuted cases using both the extortion laws and the Mann Act lawsuits against Kelly, said the judge would have wide discretion to impose a a sentence he deems appropriate. “Usually after a trial, it is more difficult for a defendant to get the proposed range of his sentence,” Honig said. “Now the judge has seen all the evidence against the accused, he has heard from the victims and this tends to increase the sentence.”

Prosecutors faced threats

The weekend before Kelly was convicted, a Chicago man named Christopher Gunn, who had attended Kelly’s trial in Brooklyn, was arrested and charged with making threats against the three American lawyers who prosecuted Kelly in New York, according to a copy of his arrest warrant. Gunn was arrested on Saturday for allegedly threatening to kill or seriously injure three women prosecutors. According to the arrest warrant, Gunn posted a video on his YouTube channel in October, shortly after Kelly was found guilty, showing a picture of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York where women work. Prosecutors believe a voice in the video is Gunn, saying, “There they are. There they work … We will invade the office,” saying the names of the three prosecutors. “If you do not have the stomach for the fight we are going to do, I ask you to save,” he allegedly said in the video. Prosecutors also said they had analyzed a CashApp account linked to Gunn showing multiple transactions from February 26, 2021 to June 1, which they said indicated that Gunn was “involved in the sale of ammunition in connection with the Kelly case”. . Transactions included $ 20 payouts with descriptions saying “30 rounds .. free R Kelly.” CNN contacted a Kelly lawyer for comment. Prosecutors believe Gunn planned to attend Kelly’s conviction on Wednesday after posting another video saying he had a “spot” for supporters to meet near the court. CNN contacted a Gunn lawyer for comment. He is expected to have a reservation hearing on Wednesday.

Support for the singer

Among the letters calling for a lower sentence for Kelly is one written by Diana Copeland, a former Kelly aide who testified as a government witness and also wrote a letter in support of Kelly saying she did it because it was “right”. “God does not want us to throw people away,” Cowland wrote. “If we have the audacity to take care of the perpetrators as well as the victims, we can all stand up.” Joycelyn Savage, who was considered a victim of Kelly by prosecutors, remains a supporter. “Robert and I are deeply in love and it breaks my heart that the government has created a narrative that I am a victim,” Savage wrote. “I am an adult woman and I can speak for myself, so I wanted to give this letter to the court.” In her letter, Savage revealed that she is now engaged to Kelly.