R. Kelly's lawyer urged a federal appeals court on Monday (March 18) to overturn the singer's sexual assault convictions, warning that the case against Kelly stretched federal racketeering laws “to the point of absurdity” and could potentially turn college fraternities into illegal conspiracies.
At a hearing before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyer Jennifer Bonjean told a panel of judges that Kelly's employees were merely “unwitting” operatives carrying out “painless” tasks for a famous person, not a group with a criminal “purpose” like the Mafia or a drug cartel.
Seeking to overturn Kelly's conviction under the federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), Bonjean accused prosecutors of using that law in an “absurd” new way.
“The government has expanded the RICO statute to a set of circumstances that is far beyond what the framers intended, which was to deal with organized crime,” Bonjean said. “Now, we're talking about an organization with an alleged criminal, but not organized crime.”
After decades of accusations of sexual misconduct, Kelly was doomed in September 2021 on nine RICO counts related to allegations that the singer orchestrated a long-term scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. In 2022 he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
At Monday's hearing, Bonjean repeatedly told jurors that the government failed to prove that members of Kelly's organization knew crimes were being committed, meaning the RICO Act did not apply. He said, for example, that the staff did not know that any of the women were minors.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kayla Crews Bensingarguing for the government, he categorically rejected that claim: “The defendant had a system that lured young people into his orbit and then took over their lives,” he told the judges.
Bensing pointed to concrete evidence that members of Kelly's organization knew of the organization's evil intent. He cited testimony that one victim had been approached by a member of Kelly's entourage at a McDonalds, told he was only 16, and then given Kelly's number and told to call him. Another Kelly employee testified that he had answered the phones for “Kelly's girlfriends,” Bensing said, some of whom he identified as “middle-aged teenagers.”
“All of this is evidence that the jury was entitled to conclude that Kelly's inner circle knew what was going on: that she was recruiting and maintaining underage women for sexual activity,” Bensing said.
Kelly faces long odds in his battle to overturn his conviction, as federal appeals courts overturn only a small percentage of the convictions that are appealed each year. But Bonjean has had success in such cases in the past, most notably winning a 2021 decision that overturned Bill Cosby's 2018 sexual assault conviction.
After Monday's arguments, the court will issue a decision in the coming months.
As in many appeals, much of Monday's hearing was spent arguing over legal issues, such as whether a single sexual act could fit the definition of “forced labor” under federal law, or whether Bonjean even had a procedural way to fight her appeal after Kelly's previous lawyers had failed to challenge the instructions given to the court at trial.
On her main point about whether RICO requires an unlawful “purpose,” Bonjean repeatedly faced pushback from judges. Judges have repeatedly pointed out that there is no written requirement that the statute be used only against pure criminal organizations, and one judge specifically pointed out that labor unions have repeatedly been accused of violating RICO.
“RICO deals with organizations, which are then used to commit criminal acts,” the judge said Danny Chin he said. “It doesn't have to be a criminal organization. It could be a perfectly legitimate organization. But if it engages in racketeering activity, it violates RICO.''
But Bonjean remained adamant, arguing that the statute could not be brought against an organization like Kelly's, which he said was merely meant to promote his music career and personal brand.
“It was not a collection of people who were out to recruit girls for sexual abuse,” Bonjean said. “Whether they turned a blind eye, if any of them suspected that any of these girls were minors, that's a whole different matter.”
“Once we get into that kind of area where we're going to say it's a RICO operation, we have multiple organizations, we have multiple houses, we have all types of organizations that are now going to become RICO operations,” Bonjean added.
Pushing the issue further, Bonjean said such an approach would have allowed federal prosecutors to indict the notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff with the RICO violations rather than the multitude of fraud charges he actually faced. At that point, Judge Richard J. Sullivan cut into.
“Well, it's 150 years old,” Sullivan said. “I don't think it mattered.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/business/legal/r-kelly-sex-abuse-appeal-attorney-rico-verdict-overturned-1235635660/