R. Kelly: Chicago judge sets tentative trial date for September 2020, pushes for progress
Another tentative trial date was set Wednesday in one of the four pending sex-crime cases against singer R. Kelly, after a state judge in Chicago attempted again to push prosecutors to speed up proceedings.
Cook County Judge Lawrence Flood, who is presiding over the state's case against Kelly, set a tentative date of Sept. 14 for Kelly to be tried on multiple counts of sexual misconduct dating back more than a decade and involving four accusers, including three who were underage at the time.
At the same time, Flood set a Jan. 22 deadline for prosecutors to decide which case will go to trial first, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
As it now stands, Kelly is charged with multiple counts of similar sex crimes in federal courts in Illinois and in New York, and also in state court in Minnesota, which has yet to hold a hearing on its Kelly case.
Kelly is tentatively scheduled to face trial in the federal case in Chicago in April and in the federal case in New York in May. If these and the September dates hold, he would face trials in three courts in two states in a six-month period of 2020, not counting whatever happens in Minnesota.
Kelly, who is being held at the federal detention facility in Chicago, was not in court Wednesday. His lead lawyer, Steve Greenberg, confirmed what happened at the hearing, as did the office of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx.
Greenberg, who has argued in past hearings against moving forward with the state case while the federal cases are pending, said that setting even a tentative date in the Cook County case was premature.
Flood, who has said in past hearings that the federal cases should not delay the state case, overruled Greenberg. Cook County was the first jurisdiction to indict Kelly, in March.
"I understand there’s two other matters in federal court, New York and in Chicago," he said from the bench, according to the Chicago Tribune. "That’s not really the concern of this court. These victims are entitled to their day in court just as the other people in the other cases."
