R. Kelly petitions President Trump for commutation of 31-year sentence
The former R&B singer has filed a clemency request with the Justice Department seeking to have his combined 31-year federal prison term reduced by President Donald Trump.
The 58-year-old singer Robert "R. Kelly" Kelly has submitted a petition for commutation of his 31-year combined federal prison sentence to President Donald Trump, according to Department of Justice records. Kelly is serving the term in a North Carolina facility for convictions in New York and Chicago that include racketeering, sex trafficking, child pornography and enticement. The New York case resulted in a 30-year sentence, while the Chicago case added a 20-year term, with one year to be served after the New York sentence and the remainder running concurrently.
Kelly was found guilty in a 2021 Brooklyn trial of leading a criminal enterprise that recruited women and underage girls for illegal sexual activity and the production of pornography, with additional charges of bribery, kidnapping, forced labor, child pornography and knowingly infecting victims with a sexually transmitted disease. A separate 2022 Chicago trial convicted him on three counts of child pornography and three counts of child enticement. Appeals to overturn the 2021 convictions were denied by a New York appeals court in 2024.
In June 2025, Kelly's lawyers filed an emergency motion seeking his release to home confinement, alleging a plot by Bureau of Prisons officials to harm him and claiming he had been given an overdose of medication while hospitalized for blood clots. The motion was denied.
"Federal officers have solicited the murder of R. Kelly because he intends to expose the corruption underlying his federal prosecutions. We have filed our motion to make sure that they fail," attorney Beau B. Brindley said in a statement to USA TODAY.
"The only person with the courage and the power to fight corruption in the prosecution of public figures is President Trump, and we will call on the courts and the President to help put an end to the corruption that now threatens Mr. Kelly's life," Brindley added.
Kelly's attorney was not available for comment on the current clemency request.