MINNEAPOLIS — The Hennepin County Attorney's Office announced Tuesday that it will not pursue its case against singer R. Kelly, who was accused of having sexual contact with a minor more than two decades ago.
The artist, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was charged in Minnesota in 2019 with offenses related to allegedly engaging in prostitution with a minor after a Minneapolis concert in 2001.
According to the attorney's office, the case against Kelly is being dropped in part because of the lengthy federal prison sentences he's already received for other cases.
In February, a federal judge in Chicago sentenced the 56-year-old Grammy Award-winning R&B singer to 20 years in prison for child pornography and enticement of minors for sex. He'll serve all but one of those simultaneously with a separate 30-year sentence on racketeering and sex trafficking convictions in New York.
Local prosecutors cited the "enormous" impact a trial would have on the survivor victim, Hennepin County legal system and the surrounding community as reasons to drop the case, along with the fact that a conviction wouldn't add any additional time in prison for Kelly.
"The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office believes the victim survivor, and in this case, there is no evidence that she was a sex worker," the attorney's office said in part in a statement. "We believed then and continue to believe the victim survivor as to what Mr. Kelly did to her in this case. And we continue to hold the unwavering position that Mr. Kelly would likely be convicted of these charges if the case proceeded to trial."
Last month, Kelly was moved from the Metropolitan Correctional Center Chicago to a medium-security federal correctional institution in Butner, North Carolina.
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