CHICAGO — Attorneys for R. Kelly will not get the chance to question an inmate who confessed to attacking the singer at a downtown jail in August, a federal judge ruled Monday.
And Kelly’s beating behind bars is not enough, on its own, to merit his release from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber wrote.
It was the latest rejection of Kelly’s many attempts to be released from custody while he awaits trial in several jurisdictions on sweeping charges related to sexual abuse.
Despite pleading poverty after he was charged last year, bank records show Kelly has enough money to flee Chicago, and chances are good that if released he would try to meddle with witnesses or evidence, Leinenweber wrote in an order Monday.
“Mr. Kelly will go to trial as soon as it is safe and practicable. Until then, he will remain in detention,” Leinenweber wrote.
Kelly was beaten in his cell Aug. 26 by fellow inmate Jeremiah Shane Farmer, who admitted to the attack in subsequent court filings.
Kelly’s attorneys wanted to question Farmer under oath as part of their effort to free him from custody, writing that “an unresolved issue remains as to whether Metropolitan Correctional Center personnel encouraged, and then allowed, a beating of Mr. Kelly to take place.”
The motion said a jail security videotape handed over by prosecutors showed Farmer had “roamed a great distance” before entering Kelly’s cell and that “no one at the MCC raised a finger to stop Mr. Farmer from attacking Mr. Kelly until after Mr. Farmer was well into beating.”
Leinenweber wrote that the attack does not merit Kelly’s release from custody, and if he “wishes to challenge the conditions of his confinement or the MCC’s ability to protect him,” he can bring a civil suit.
According to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons report, Farmer was able to slip away from an MCC employee on Aug. 26, enter Kelly’s cell and beat him repeatedly in the head while Kelly was in the lower bunk. The attack stopped only after a jail security officer pepper-sprayed Farmer, according to the report.
Farmer, 39, has claimed in court filings he committed the attack “in hopes of getting spotlight attention and world news notice to shed light on” wrongdoing by the government. He also was angered by repeated lockdowns at the jail that he blamed on Kelly’s celebrity status.
Farmer of Hammond was convicted last year in the June 25, 1999, slayings of Marion Lowry, 74, and Harvey Siegers, 67, who were beaten with a small sledgehammer at their business, Calumet Auto Rebuilders. He is facing a mandatory life sentence and was transferred to a federal facility in Michigan after the attack on Kelly.
Kelly, 53, faces federal indictments in two states on charges related to sexual abuse as well as multiple indictments filed in Cook County. He has been held without bond since his arrest on the federal charges in July 2019.
