R. Kelly’s lawyer says the disgraced R&B star and convicted sex offender was recently hospitalized after overdosing on anxiety and sleep medication in prison, attributing the event to a supposed jailhouse murder plot that prosecutors have dismissed as entirely made-up.
Kelly, who’s serving a 30-plus-year sentence for two federal sex crime convictions, has been petitioning a Chicago court for release since last week. Defense lawyer Beau Brindley claimed in an eyebrow-raising June 10 court filing that Bureau of Prison officials had tried to solicit another inmate to kill the singer (Robert Sylvester Kelly) to stop him from uncovering prosecutorial misconduct in his trials. Prosecutors deny that there’s any murder plot against Kelly.
Now, Brindley claims prison officials have tried another method of killing Kelly: administering the singer an overdose quantity of his medications while he was in solitary confinement last Thursday (June 12).
“In the early morning hours of June 13, 2025, Mr. Kelly awoke,” Brindley writes in a court filing from Monday (June 16). “He felt faint. He was dizzy. He started to see black spots in his vision. Mr. Kelly tried to get up, but fell to the ground. He crawled to the door of the cell and lost consciousness.”
Brindley says Kelly was taken from the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C., to Duke University Hospital, where he was informed of the overdose. Kelly was hospitalized for two days to treat the overdose, according to the court filing.
To make matters worse, Brindley says, Kelly learned at the hospital that he had developed life-threatening blood clots in his lungs that required surgery. But Kelly was allegedly denied this surgery and taken back to Butner, where he was returned to solitary confinement without medical care.
“He could die from this condition, and they are letting it happen,” writes Brindley. “There is no legitimate explanation for that.”
Brindley’s court filing reiterates his request to have Kelly released to home confinement or temporary furlough, saying “his life actually depends on it.”
Prosecutors have called the allegations a “fanciful conspiracy” and “deeply unserious.” They also say the Chicago criminal court doesn’t have jurisdiction over the issue, and that it must be brought instead as a civil rights case or habeas corpus petition in North Carolina.
In response to Kelly’s latest claims about the alleged overdose and blood clot issue, prosecutors wrote late Monday, “This is the behavior of an abuser and a master manipulator on display.”
“This court should not allow Kelly to turn its docket into a grocery store checkout aisle tabloid,” prosecutors added.
Billboard reached out to Duke Hospital seeking to confirm the facts of Kelly’s hospital stay. A Duke spokesperson deferred to the Bureau of Prisons, which declined to comment on the matter.
“For privacy, safety and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any incarcerated individual, including medical and health-related issues,” said Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Scott Taylor in a statement to Billboard.
The motion to release Kelly from prison is scheduled to be heard by the Chicago judge on Friday (June 20). Meanwhile, Brindley has been publicly asking President Donald Trump to pardon Kelly.
Kelly was convicted in 2021 and 2022 at two separate federal trials, one in New York and one in Chicago, on a slew of criminal charges including racketeering, sex trafficking, child pornography and enticing minors for sex.
The former R&B star was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the New York conviction and 20 years in the Chicago case, although the vast majority of the second sentence will overlap with the first. Both convictions have been upheld on appeal.
