CHICAGO (AP) — A Cook County judge on Wednesday ordered singer R. Kelly to stand trial on one of four sexual abuse cases on Sept. 14, but it remains unclear which of the cases prosecutors will take to trial first.
FILE – In this June 26, 2019, file photo, R&B singer R. Kelly, center, arrives at the Leighton Criminal Court building for an arraignment on sex-related felonies in Chicago. (AP Photo/Amr Alfiky, File)
During the hearing in Chicago, Judge Lawrence Flood told prosecutors he wants to know by Jan. 22 which of the four separate indictments they plan to take to trial first.
The 52-year-old singer, who is being held without bond and did not attend the hearing, is already scheduled to stand trial in federal court in Chicago in April and again in federal court in Brooklyn the next month.
Kelly was charged by Cook County prosecutors last March with sexually abusing three minor girls and one woman over a period of more than a decade.
Then in July, in federal court in Chicago, the R&B singer was indicted on charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice, with prosecutors accusing him of paying off potential witnesses in his 2008 trial – at which he was acquitted — to get them to change his story.
At the same time, he was indicted in New York on charges that include racketeering, kidnapping, forced labor and the sexual exploitation of a charges. Prosecutors alleged he and his employees and assistants picked out women and girls at concerts and groomed them for sexual abuse.
