R Kelly’s Chicago sexual assault allegations are DROPPED by prosecutor, but 30-year sentence remains

State charges against disgraced rapper R. Kelly have been dropped, a Chicago prosecutor announced Monday, a decision he admitted would be “disappointing” to his accusers.

Kim Foxx made her announcement on the eve of a hearing in the state case, in which the 56-year-old woman is accused of sexually abusing four people, three of whom were minors.

Foxx said he appreciated that his decision was controversial, given that he had actively sought out his victims and encouraged them to press charges.

But, he noted, the Chicago-born singer is still behind bars, having been found guilty on federal charges in New York and Illinois.

Prosecutors sometimes choose to go ahead with more trials out of concern that convictions elsewhere could be overturned during appeals. They see an opportunity for additional convictions as insurance.

“We didn’t do a monetary cost-benefit analysis,” Foxx said, adding, however, that the resources spent on a trial could now be used “in defense of other sexual assault survivors.”

Kim Foxx, the Cook County State’s Attorney, is seen Monday announcing that the charges have been dropped.

Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is serving a 30-year prison sentence. in the case of New York Y awaits judgment on February 23 in Chicago federal court.

He is appealing those convictions.

Based on the New York ruling alone, he will not be eligible for release until he is in his 80s.

Foxx said he would ask a judge to dismiss the charges on Tuesday.

‘Mister. Kelly is potentially considering not being released from prison again for the crimes that she has committed,” the prosecutor said, referring to her federal convictions.

“While today’s cases are no longer being pursued, we believe that justice has been served.”

Since Kelly was accused in Cook County in 2019, Federal juries in Chicago and New York have convicted him of a series of crimes, including child pornography, seduction, racketeering and sex trafficking related to allegations that he victimized women and girls.

Kelly is seen in May 2019 leaving the Daley Center in Chicago after a hearing in her child support case. The 56-year-old is currently serving a 30-year sentence after a New York court found him guilty of sexually abusing girls.

Kelly is seen with R&B star Aaliyah in 1994, whom he married when she was just 15 years old.

Foxx said he contacted Kelly’s attorney two weeks ago to tell him the charges could be dropped.

He also spoke to the women whose complaints were at the center of the case.

Foxx expressed praise for the “courage it took for them to come forward.”

Another case of sexual misconduct is slope in Hennepin County, Minnesota, where the Grammy Award winner faces solicitation charges.

That case has also been on hold while the federal cases unfolded.

Minnesota prosecutors have not said whether they still intend to prosecute Kelly.

Known for his smash hit ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ and sex-infused songs like ‘Bump n’ Grind,’ Kelly sold millions of albums even after allegations of his abuse of girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s. 1990.

Allegations that Kelly abused girls began to circulate publicly in the 1990s. He was sued in 1997 by a woman who alleged sexual assault and sexual harassment when he was a minor.

He overcame child pornography charges in Chicago in 2008, when a jury acquitted him.

Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct did not emerge until the #MeToo reckoning and the launch of the Lifetime docuseries ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ in early 2019.

Foxx announced the Cook County charges months before the federal cases in New York and Chicago.

Foxx’s office alleged that he repeatedly sought out girls for sex, including one he met at his 16th birthday party and another who met Kelly while she was on trial in 2008.

Federal prosecutors in New York told jury at his 2021 trial that Kelly used his entourage of managers and assistants to get to know the girls and keep them compliant, an operation prosecutors said amounted to a criminal enterprise.

Last year, prosecutors in Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago portrayed him as a master manipulator who used his fame and wealth to ensnare dazzled fans, some of them minors, to sexually abuse and then discard. four the accusers stated.

While prosecutors in that case won convictions on six of the 13 counts against him in that case, the government missed the main count: that Kelly and his then-business manager successfully rigged his 2008 child pornography trial.