R Kelly will serve an additional one year in prison on charges relating to indecent images of children and child enticement after completing his 30-year racketeering sentence, a federal judge has ruled.
The disgraced R&B singer was handed a 20-year prison term on Thursday, but he will serve nearly all of the sentence simultaneously alongside the sentence he received in 2022.
Kelly will serve no more than 31 years, which means he will be eligible for release at around age 80.
The central question going into the sentencing in Kelly’s hometown of Chicago, US, was whether District Judge Harry Leinenweber would order the 56-year-old to serve the additional sentence simultaneously with or only after he completes 30 years.
The latter would have been equal to a life sentence.
Prosecutors had acknowledged that lengthening his sentence would have erased any chance of Kelly getting out of prison alive, but argued that his crimes against children and lack of remorse justified it.
