Federal judge who presided over R. Kelly trial dead at 87 after battling lung cancer
U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, who presided over singer R. Kelly’s trial on child abuse charges, has died. He was 87.
Leinenweber died Tuesday evening, the Eastern Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said in a statement. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Leinenweber was diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year and died at the Florida home he shared with his wife.
“Judge Harry D. Leinenweber was a friend, mentor and model lawyer,” Chief Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer of the Northern District of Illinois said in the statement. “My colleagues and I are deeply saddened by Judge Leinenweber’s passing. We hope for comfort and peace for his family. We thank his family for sharing him with us for more than 39 years.”
President Ronald Reagan nominated Leinenweber, a former state lawmaker, to the board in 1985. In 2002 he took senior status, a form of semi-retirement, but continued to work.
He presided over Kelly’s trial in 2022. Prosecutors charged the Grammy Award-winning singer of producing sexually explicit videos of children and enticing girls into sex. The trial ultimately lasted a month before the jurors arrived convicted Kelly of six of the thirteen charges against him.
The verdict came months after a federal judge in New York handed down the sentence Kelly to 30 years in prison in June for racketeering and sex trafficking. Leinenweber sentenced the singer to 20 years in prison in the Illinois case.
Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonojean wrote in an email that she enjoyed handling cases for Leinenweber.
“He let lawyers do their job and never put his thumb on the scales of justice,” she wrote. “He was an honorable judge and an honorable man. The judiciary needs more judges like him. He will be missed by advocates from all sides of the aisle.”
Leinenweber also supervised a trial last year that ended with Four people convicted of bribery plot that provided a glimpse into pay-to-play politics in Illinois. Prosecutors accused two former utility ComEd executives, a former utility consultant and a longtime government insider, of arranging contracts, jobs and money from then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to ensure bills that ComEd profits would increase, would become law. Madigan has been charged in the case. His trial starts next year.
Robert Gaines was a juror in the ComEd trial. He told the Sun-Times that Leinenweber had “complete control of the courtroom.”
“He knew how to put his foot on the ground, and then he knew how to leave it off,” Gaines said. “He was so cool and down to earth. He was the coolest judge I’ve ever seen, on and off TV.”