R. Kelly claims he was hospitalized for drug overdose; feds slam his ‘repugnant’ request for house arrest

R. Kelly’s legal team continues to campaign to have the R&B singer released amid claims he’s become a target behind bars.

Amid claims from his legal team that he’s become a target in prison, R. Kelly’s attorneys say the R&B singer was hospitalized following the intentional adminstration of the wrong dosage of medication. 

The startling admission arrived on Monday, June 16, as federal prosecutors in Chicago filed a new motion referring to the 58-year-old’s attempts to be released from prison on house arrest as “fanciful,” “deeply unserious,” and “makes a mockery” of his victims, the Chicago Sun Times reported.

According to his attorneys, after they sounded the alarm about a potential murder-for-hire plot against Kelly last week in their initial filing, he was placed into solitary confinement for his safety and directed by prison officials to take medication. Soon after, Kelly was taken to Duke University Hospital early Friday morning after he complained of feeling faint and seeing black spots; his attorney alleged that he was told that he’d been given an overdose of his medication. While at the hospital, doctors also reportedly found blood clots in his legs and on his lungs and were planning to perform surgery when prison officials intercepted and instead had him brought back to the prison. 

In his filing last week, attorney Beau Brindley is claiming that his client has become the subject of an Aryan Brotherhood plot involving high-ranking prison officials within the Bureau of Prisons to have him killed behind bars. Brindley is urging for Kelly to be released on house arrest as more threats to his safety make themselves known. He also intends to reach out to President Donald Trump for help. A motion hearing in the case is slated for Friday.

“Unfortunately, no court has the ability to enter an order freeing Kelly’s victims from the prison that Kelly put them in,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Julien wrote in a filing by federal prosecutors in response, per the Chicago Sun Times. 

“Imagine a scenario where any and every incarcerated criminal could go back to the criminal court(s) that imposed a sentence of imprisonment upon them, allege that they fear imminent harm, and demand to be released from custody while the matter was investigated,” Julien continued, per WTTW. “Every convicted murderer, rapist, and terrorist will have a newfound shot at freedom. This is an impractical, unworkable, and unlawful scenario.”  

Kelly has been serving out a 30-year sentence since he was convicted of racketeering and sex crimes in New York in 2021.