Disgraced singer R Kelly was rushed to hospital after he overdosed on medication given to him by staff in prison, his attorneys say.
The R&B star suffered the overdose last week after prison guards deliberately gave him too much of his anxiety medication, his lawyers claim in a legal filing.
The singer is serving a 30-year prison sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking, after being exposed as a serial sex abuser in the #MeToo movement.
The artist, real name Robert Sylvester Kelly, claims he was put into solitary confinement on June 10 as a retaliatory move by prison staff after he accused them of an elaborate plot to kill him.
Federal prosecutors rejected these allegations at the time as ‘deeply unserious’. In response to Kelly’s latest filing, the Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on ‘pending litigation.’
He says he was locked up in solitary confinement with his regular dose of anxiety medication, but on June 13, he was given an ‘overdose quantity’ of the medications and was directed to take them, the filing said.
That day, Kelly reported feeling ‘faint’ and ‘dizzy’, and ‘started to see black spots in his vision’, before he allegedly passed out and was rushed to nearby Duke University Hospital.
According to the filing, the rapper was heard telling a prison staffer that, ‘this is going to open a new can of worms.’
Kelly spent two days recovering in hospital. His attorneys allege that the prison staffers ‘gave him an amount of medicine that could have killed him’.
Disgraced singer R Kelly was rushed to hospital after overdosing on medication in prison
He is serving a 30-year prison sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking, after being exposed as a serial sex abuser in the #MeToo movement
Kelly alleges he has been mistreated in prison by staff at the Federal Correctional Institute facility in Butner, North Carolina, and has not been given necessary treatment for blood clots, his lawyers said.
When he was rushed to hospital last week, doctors reportedly found blood clots in his legs that will require further surgery.
However, he was allegedly denied surgery and forcibly removed from the hospital after several days.
Kelly was allegedly put in solitary confinement ‘against his will’ in response to a separate filing from his attorneys which claimed three prison officials hatched a plot to have him killed by a white supremacist gang.
Kelly’s attorneys cited a sworn declaration from terminally ill inmate named Mikeal Glenn Stine in which he alleged the prison officials asked him to carry out the singer’s murder.
Kelly requested he be placed on house arrest for his crimes – which included convictions for child pornography and enticing minors for sex.
Prosecutors have slammed this attempt to be freed from his sex crimes sentence as ‘deeply unserious’ and ‘repugnant’.
According to Kelly’s lawyers, he has been mistreated in prison by staffers and has not been given necessary treatment for blood clots
Stine, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang, alleged that high-ranking officials in the prison system offered him the opportunity to escape from prison and live out his final months as a ‘free man’ before his terminal illness kills him.
In the filing, it was further alleged that Stine was pressured to carry out the killing in March when he was transferred to Kelly’s unit, and was told by staff: ‘You need to do what you came here for.’
Stine said he stalked Kelly for months as he considered the assassination plot, but changed his mind and told the singer about the plan to kill him, according to the filing cited by The Independent.
The singer’s attorneys say they became aware of a second plot in June to have a different member of the Aryan Brotherhood kill both Kelly and Stine.
Kelly’s attorneys have requested a pardon from President Trump, saying the singer, ‘does not have the luxury to wait for vindication from the Courts that will follow the exposure of the corruption at the heart of his prosecutions.’
The attorneys previously claimed they ‘are engaged in conversations with multiple persons close to the White House and to President Trump’.