R. Kelly and his lawyer are claiming that federal prison staff at his North Carolina facility intentionally overdosed him with medication as part of a plot to kill him, according to court documents filed by his attorney this week.
The disgraced R&B singer claims Bureau of Prisons staff at the federal center in Butner, North Carolina, purposefully gave him too much medication on June 12, causing him to lose consciousness and requiring hospitalization for two days at Duke University Hospital.
In 2021, Kelly was convicted of multiple charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, producing child sexual abuse material, and enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity.
Prosecutors filed a swift response to Kelly’s latest complaint, and said he continuously paints himself as the victim.
“This is the behavior of an abuser and a master manipulator on display,” prosecutors wrote in their response.
The prosecution also accused Kelly of knowingly submitting an action to a court that has no jurisdiction over his case, claiming he chose to “write to let this Court know that he is ‘cold’ in prison, and to criticize the medical care that he is receiving” in order to turn his situation “into a grocery store checkout aisle tabloid.”
Kelly’s attorney, Beau B. Brindley, filed court documents Monday which claimed a prison staff member instructed Kelly to take additional medication on the night of June 12. The next morning, Kelly woke up feeling faint and dizzy.
According to the court filing, Kelly “tried to get up, but fell to the ground” and “crawled to the door of the cell and lost consciousness.” He was then taken by ambulance to Duke University Hospital.
During the ambulance ride, Kelly claims he heard a prison officer say: “This is going to open a whole new can of worms.”
At the hospital, Kelly’s lawyer claims that doctors found he had ingested “an overdose quantity of his medications that threatened his life.” Doctors also discovered blood clots in both of Kelly’s legs and lungs and recommended surgery along with a two-week hospital stay.
“When advised he required surgery and needed to be kept for two weeks, officers assigned to Mr. Kelly in the hospital contacted the officials” at the prison, Brindley stated in court documents. “Within an hour, officers with guns came into his hospital room and removed Mr. Kelly. He was taken from the hospital against his will and against the directives of the doctors.”
Kelly was returned to solitary confinement at the prison, where his attorney says he “was denied the surgery he needs to clear blood clots in his lungs that threaten his life.”
Kelly has reportedly told his lawyer he is convinced he will be killed or left to die in solitary confinement.
“Mr. Kelly’s life is in danger, and that danger is coming from Bureau of Prisons officials and their actions. Mr. Kelly needs this Court’s intervention. His life actually depends on it,” his lawyer said, requesting he serve out the rest of his sentence in home confinement.
The latest allegations come just one week after Kelly’s legal team sought his immediate release due to an alleged murder-for-hire plot. According to a reported statement from inmate Mikeal Glenn Stine, an Aryan Brotherhood gang leader, authorities secretly offered to release him from prison if he murdered Kelly.
Stine said he ultimately decided not to proceed with the plan and instead told Kelly about the alleged plot. Kelly now alleges that a different member of the Aryan Brotherhood has been asked to kill both himself and Stine.
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is serving a 31-year prison sentence for multiple convictions related to sex trafficking and child pornography.
In 2021, he was convicted of racketeering and sex-trafficking charges by a federal jury and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The following year, he was convicted on six of 13 counts during a separate Chicago trial, including three child pornography charges, and sentenced to 20 years, with 19 years to run concurrently with his previous sentence.
The Chicago native and former R&B superstar has only served a handful of years of his three-decade sentence. Kelly’s attorney has asked President Donald Trump to intervene and pardon his disgraced client.
“We are fighting to keep Mr. Kelly alive and expose the corruption,” Brindley told The New York Post. “We call upon President Trump to help us in this endeavor as he is the only person who has shown the courage and willingness to stand up to these people and actually stop the corruption in its tracks.”
Kelly was placed in solitary confinement after his attorneys filed an emergency motion claiming that three Bureau of Prisons officials plotted to have another inmate kill him.