Crime & Law

R. Kelly, Claiming Life is in Danger From Prison Officials, Asks for Release From Custody

Disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly is asking to be released from prison just three years into his 30-year sentence, claiming his life is in danger after federal officials allegedly stole confidential communications to help secure his conviction.

In a new filing made Tuesday, Kelly’s attorney Beau Brindley claims that officials from the federal Bureau of Prisons have plotted to murder his client in order to cover up the alleged theft of privileged attorney/client communications he says were used to help convict his client.

Brindley is asking the court to allow Kelly to be released to home detention.

“The facts underlying this motion are as stunning as is the remedy that must be sought: the release of a convicted inmate whose life is threatened by the very persons charged with protecting it,” Brindley wrote in the motion.

Spokespersons for the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment Tuesday.

Kelly was convicted in two separate trials — one in New York, another in Chicago — of racketeering conspiracy and child pornography charges. As part of his Chicago case, a federal jury found Kelly sexually abused his 14-year-old goddaughter “Jane” and other minors in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

He was sentenced to 30 years in prison following his New York conviction, and was handed one additional year after his Chicago conviction. The singer is currently being held at a federal prison in North Carolina with a scheduled release date in 2045.

According to the motion, Bureau of Prisons officials and Kelly’s former cellmate illegally accessed Kelly’s communications while he was incarcerated and then handed that information over to federal prosecutors to help turn witnesses — including Kelly’s former girlfriend Azriel Clary — against Kelly.

The motion then claims that a bureau official transferred Mikeal Glenn Stine, an incarcerated member of the Aryan Brotherhood, to Kelly’s prison with instructions to kill him because, according to the motion, his “high-priced lawyers were going to expose damaging information that would harm high ranking B.O.P. officers and other officials.”

As part of that plan, the motion claims, Stine would be moved to Kelly’s prison unit, then would be allowed to escape BOP custody following his subsequent arrest for Kelly’s murder.

Stine was moved to that prison, the motion states, but instead of carrying out the alleged murder plot, he instead informed Kelly of his plans in an effort to “expose” the BOP. 

The motion also claims that earlier this month, a second member of the Aryan Brotherhood had been approached by a BOP official with instructions to kill both Kelly and Stine.

“Mr. Kelly faces an extraordinary threat,” Brindley wrote in the motion, “and extraordinary relief is warranted.”

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