R. Kelly’s attorneys filed a new claim in court on Friday (Oct. 16) saying that there is video from an attack against their client that showed no one “raised a finger” to help the singer. The attack took place in late August at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, Illinois, and the claim states that no one stepped in to stop the inmate until he was “well into beating Kelly.”
The lawyers say that the video shows that the attacker “roamed a great distance within the MCC before carrying out that act, without any opposition. It is undisputed that, as a result, Mr. Kelly has suffered significant physical and psychological injuries.”
The disgraced singer’s attorneys are asking for an evidentiary hearing and want to question the attacker, Jeremiah Shane Farmer, under oath to figure out if he was “encouraged” to carry on the attack. “An unresolved issue remains as to whether MCC personnel encouraged, and then allowed, a beating of Mr. Kelly to take place,” Kelly’s lawyer Michael Leonard wrote in the filing. “That alone merits an evidentiary hearing.”
His lawyers are continuing their efforts to have Kelly released on bond pending trial on the sexual abuse-related charges that landed him at the federal prison. Their requests to have him released previously have been denied.
The R&B crooner was attacked in his MCC prison cell on Aug. 26 by his fellow inmate, Farmer. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 39-year-old is a convicted gang member of the Latin Kings. He is doing a mandatory life sentence for a double murder from 1999. Farmer entered the singer’s cell when he was sleeping and hit him in the head several times. According to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons report, a jail security officer ordered the attacker to stop and then pepper-sprayed Farmer.
Court filings show that Farmer carried out the attack “in hopes of getting spotlight attention and world news notice to shed light on” his own case. He also said he was angered and blamed Kelly for the repeated lockdowns at MCC.
The singer is currently facing two federal indictments in two states on sexual abuse charges and has been held without bond since his July 2019 arrest.