R&B singer R. Kelly has been sentenced to a 20-year prison term by a US judge for charges that include child pornography and enticement of a minor.
Kelly, who is 56 years old, had previously been convicted on racketeering and trafficking charges in a federal trial in Brooklyn and was already serving a 30-year sentence.
The Chicago judge, who presided over Kelly’s most recent trial, ruled that most of the new sentence would be served concurrently with the previous one, with only one year added to his sentence.
Although Kelly’s total sentence amounts to a maximum of 31 years in prison, the defense team saw it as a win since they had argued for a concurrent sentence, claiming that it was a matter of fairness.
They also accused the prosecution of attempting to ensure that Kelly would never be released.
Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, has said that she will appeal both of his federal convictions.
In the September 2022 trial in Chicago, Kelly was convicted on six of the 13 counts he faced, which included three counts of producing child pornography and three of enticement of a minor.
