On Friday, June 13, 2025, Robert Sylvester Kelly, better known as R. Kelly, was admitted to Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, according to court documents.
Kelly allegedly “fell to the ground” after feeling “faint” and seeing “black spots.” Documents filed by Kelly’s attorneys claim he was given an “overdose of his medication.”
“Mr. Kelly’s life is in danger, and that danger is coming from Bureau of Prisons officials and their actions,” the court filing reads. “Mr. Kelly needs this Court’s intervention. His life actually depends on it.”
Kelly’s legal representatives maintain officials from the Bureau of Prisons are threatening their client’s livelihood. On Wednesday, June 11, 2025, attorneys for Kelly filed a motion accusing the Bureau of Prisons of recruiting another inmate, Mikeal Glenn Stine, to take Kelly’s life. The filing claims officials tried to coerce Stine, who reportedly has terminal cancer, into killing Kelly in exchange for the opportunity to live out the final months of his life as a “free man.” However, court documents filed by Kelly’s team allege Stine told Kelly “the truth” and said “that his life was absolutely in danger.”
One day after the initial filing, Kelly’s team made a supplemental filing claiming Kelly had been moved to solitary confinement and was barred from speaking to an attorney.
“And what’s the reason? Because he was the victim of a murder threat,” the court document reads. “That makes no sense. He is being housed in the same solitary confinement conditions as inmates who commit the acts of prison violence that he fears.”
Amid the filings regarding Stine and solitary confinement, multiple reports emerged suggesting Kelly’s associates are lobbying for Donald Trump to pardon him.
“President Trump has been fighting against this kind of criminal weaponization of the DOJ against public figures since he took office,” attorney Beau Brindley told USA Today. “And we will ask him to now stand up with us as we advance his fight and as our client fears that he might be killed to cover up the corruption that we seek to expose.”
Most recently, Kelly’s attorneys requested the singer be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence at his residence. However, prosecutors pushed back against the request, calling it “deeply unserious.”
“Kelly’s motion makes a mockery of the harm suffered by Kelly’s victims and flouts this Court’s previous ruling that this Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain Kelly’s complaints about the conditions of his confinement,” the prosecutors’ filing reads.
Kelly is currently serving a 31-year-prison sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute Facility in Butner, North Carolina, after being convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking
