Disgraced singer R Kelly has been denied release from prison just days after his lawyers claimed he overdosed as a result of a botched murder plot.
The former R&B star’s legal team filed a motion on June 17 to have him sent to home confinement rather than being behind bars due to the ‘imminent’ threat to his life.
But Judge Martha Pacold ruled that there was ‘no legal basis for this court’s jurisdiction’ and threw the request out.
The artist’s lawyers claimed last week that Kelly had suffered an overdose after prison guards deliberately gave him too much anxiety medication.
They also claimed that the 58-year-old, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was forcibly removed from hospital despite doctors finding blood clots in his legs that required surgery.
Federal prosecutors rejected these allegations at the time as ‘deeply unserious’ and said the latest motion made ‘a mockery’ of the abuse suffered by Kelly’s victims.
They added that ‘every convicted murderer, rapist, and terrorist will have a newfound shot at freedom’ if Kelly was to be released from prison.
Despite this and the recent rejection to have Kelly sent to home confinement, his lawyer Beau Brindley said he and his legal team would file a new motion based on what he called ‘newly discovered evidence.’
Mr Brindley said the request would also call for immediate bail ‘pending its litigation’.
‘We are not surprised by this ruling as we knew that technical jurisdiction would be a challenge under these circumstances,’ Mr Brindley told USA TODAY.
‘However, we had no choice but to act immediately given explicit evidence of a threat to Robert Kelly’s life.’
The news organisation said as of June 19, Mr Brindley and his team had not yet filed the new motion.
Kelly was allegedly put in solitary confinement ‘against his will’ in response to a separate filing from his attorneys which claimed three prison officials hatched a plot to have him killed by a white supremacist gang.
His legal team cited a sworn declaration from terminally ill inmate named Mikeal Glenn Stine in which he alleged the prison officials asked him to carry out the singer’s murder.
Kelly requested he be placed on house arrest for his crimes – which included convictions for child pornography and enticing minors for sex.
Prosecutors called the attempt to be freed from his sex crimes sentence ‘repugnant’.
Stine, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang, alleged that high-ranking officials in the prison system offered him the opportunity to escape from prison and live out his final months as a ‘free man’ before his terminal illness kills him.
In the filing, it was further alleged that Stine was pressured to carry out the killing in March when he was transferred to Kelly’s unit, and was told by staff: ‘You need to do what you came here for.’
Stine said he stalked Kelly for months as he considered the assassination plot, but changed his mind and told the singer about the plan to kill him, according to the filing cited by The Independent.
The singer’s attorneys say they became aware of a second plot in June to have a different member of the Aryan Brotherhood kill both Kelly and Stine.
Kelly’s attorneys have also requested a pardon from President Donald Trump, saying the singer, ‘does not have the luxury to wait for vindication from the Courts that will follow the exposure of the corruption at the heart of his prosecutions.’
The attorneys previously claimed they ‘are engaged in conversations with multiple persons close to the White House and to President Trump’.
Kelly was convicted in 2021 and 2022 for racketeering, sex trafficking, child pornography and enticement.
A New York City federal court sentenced him to 30 years in prison in 2022 and he was sentenced to 20 years in jail in a Chicago federal court the year after.
Evidence at trial in New York included testimony from more than 10 victims, as well as video and DNA evidence.
In the Chicago trial it emerged that Kelly enticed multiple underage girls to engage in sexual activity which he recorded.
Kelly met his victims in the late 1990s and engaged in sex acts with them when they were as young as 14, 15 and 16 years old before covering up the acts.
The singer has been behind bars since July 2019, and is now at the prison that housed late Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. He will be 78 when eligible for release in 2045.
