R. Kelly needs more time to challenge last year’s sex trafficking convictions because he recently contracted COVID-19 in jail and fired most of his legal team, his attorney told a federal judge Tuesday.
Citing the recent diagnosis, Kelly’s remaining attorney asked for a two-week extension until Feb. 17 to file his post-trial motions challenging the September convictions, which could result in a life sentence. The delay was immediately approved by the judge overseeing the case.
Perhaps more notable than his COVID status, Tuesday’s filing also disclosed that Kelly was “parting ways” with the legal team that represented him at trial last year. Attorneys Devereaux Cannick and Calvin Scholar have already moved to withdraw from the case, and Tuesday’s filing said that Nicole Blank Becker and Thomas A. Farinella would do the same soon.
The attorney shakeup will leave Kelly’s case in the hands of Jennifer Ann Bonjean, who gained notoriety last summer when she won a ruling on appeal that overturned Bill Cosby’s 2018 sex assault conviction and saw the comedian released from prison.
Kelly was convicted in September on nine counts related to accusations that the singer, who had faced decades of accusations and rumors of sexual misconduct, had orchestrated a long-running scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. He’s also facing a second trial, currently scheduled to start in August in Chicago federal court, on separate charges that Kelly obtained child pornography and obstructed justice.
The move to drop his trial attorneys is the latest legal shakeup for Kelly. Attorneys Steve Greenberg and Michael Leonard, who repped the singer for years, dropped out of the New York case just months before last summer’s trial. Greenberg and Leonard also moved to withdraw from the Chicago case last month, citing “an irretrievable breakdown in communications between counsel and client” and “a fundamental disagreement regarding strategy.”:
Kelly hired Bonjean, who runs her own criminal defense and civil rights firm in New York, in October.