Lawyer of R Kelly has revealed that the disgraced US singer been placed on suicide watch.
This comes weeks after a New York Jury found the Grammy Award-winning singer guilty of child abuse and sexual offences.
R Kelly, who faces four separate charges of sexual abuse in a state court in Chicago, and a child prostitution charge in Minnesota, faces up to life in prison after he was found guilty for similar offences in New York.
His lawyer told a federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday, that he and another of R Kelly’s attorneys will attend trial on other cases through out July next year, prompting the U.S. District Judge, Harry Leinenweber, to set his Chicago trial for August 1, 2022.
“I think he’s talking about bringing in new lawyers in New York,” R Kelly’s lawyer, Greenberg, told U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.
“He has since been placed on suicide watch.”
In the first court hearing since a jury found Kelly guilty three weeks ago, attorneys told the judge they estimated that the singer’s case, along with those of co-defendants, Derrell McDavid and Milton ‘June’ Brown, would last three to four weeks.
R Kelly, who remains in a New York jail, was listening to the hearing on a conference call, but he did not speak.
His sentencing there is scheduled for May 4, 2021, and he faces up to life in prison.
Legal experts have said there is a possibility that prosecutors could drop the charges in state court if he receives a lengthy prison sentence in New York.
A New York jury found him guilty of 12 individual illegal acts, including sex with underage girls, as well as a 1994 scheme to bribe an Illinois public aid official to obtain a fake ID for 15-year-old singer, Aaliyah, so the two of them could get married illegally.
Kelly was 24-years-old at the time.
