R. Kelly is pleading for a new trial in Chicago federal court, claiming prosecutors and prison staff conspired to kill him and derail his legal defense.
In his latest motion filed Friday (June 20), Kelly’s attorney Beau Brindley accused the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago and the Bureau of Prisons of misconduct, including stealing confidential legal mail, coercing a key witness and allegedly using white supremacist inmates to carry out an assassination attempt.
“This is not coincidence,” Brindley wrote. “This is not an R. Kelly production. This is what they are doing to him as these words are being written.”
The motion centers on a witness known as “Jane,” who initially testified in R. Kelly’s favor during his 2008 trial. According to the filing, prosecutors pressured Jane into changing her story by threatening her parents with prosecution and promising her financial rewards.
Her revised testimony became a cornerstone of Kelly’s later federal conviction.
Kelly’s legal team also accused prison officials of collaborating with Kishan Modugumudi, a government informant who allegedly stole Kelly’s attorney-client correspondence while they were cellmates.
That mail, according to the motion, was passed to another informant, Larry McGee, who then showed it to Jane and another witness to provoke them into testifying against Kelly.
One of the most serious claims in the motion involves the alleged murder plot.
Mikeal Glenn Stine, a high-ranking Aryan Brotherhood member, reportedly told Kelly that prison officials sent him to FCI Butner with orders to kill him.
Stine claims a Bureau of Prisons official promised him early release in exchange for carrying out the hit. Instead, Stine says he warned Kelly and refused to follow through. He is now prepared to testify under oath.
The motion also alleges medical neglect.
Doctors at Duke University Hospital had scheduled emergency surgery, but armed officers allegedly removed him from the hospital at gunpoint and placed him in solitary confinement without medical care.
“When prosecutors believe that they define what justice is, then they begin to think that whatever they do to achieve their goals is fully justifiable. They begin to break the law while purporting to uphold it. They begin to believe that their decision to make a person the ‘target’ of an investigation renders that person guilty. And they begin to think that whatever they choose to do to make their case against their so-called target is necessarily righteous regardless of what laws are broken or how many constitutional rights are fractured in the process. That is what happened with Robert Kelly,” Brindley said.
R. Kelly is seeking both a new trial and immediate release on bond, citing newly uncovered evidence of witness tampering and obstruction of justice. A bond hearing is still pending.
He is currently serving a 30-year sentence at FCI Butner in North Carolina following convictions in New York and Chicago on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges.