R. Kelly has been placed on suicide watch at the federal detention facility in New York where he is being held after he was sentenced this week to 30 years in prison on racketeering and sex trafficking charges, his lawyer said Friday.
But the disgraced R&B singer is not suicidal, attorney Jennifer Bonjean told CNN she believes, adding Kelly had been fearful of being put on suicide watch.
"The irony of putting someone on suicide watch when they're not suicidal is it actually causes more harm," Bonjean said.
Kelly, 55, was placed on suicide watch because he is well known, Bonjean said she was told by prosecutors who spoke with prison officials. CNN has reached out to prosecutors and the Bureau of Prisons for confirmation.
"It's punishment for being high-profile. And it's horrifying frankly," she said. "To put someone under suicide watch under those conditions is cruel and unusual when they don't need it."
Bonjean had asked Kelly to email her after he was taken back into the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn following his sentencing Wednesday but never got an email from him, she said. She hasn't gotten answers about his status from the detention center until prosecutors requested information from the facility, Bonjean added.
A jury convicted Kelly last September on nine counts, including one charge of racketeering and eight counts of violations of the Mann Act, a sex trafficking law. Prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York accused Kelly of using his status as a celebrity and a "network of people at his disposal to target girls, boys and young women for his own sexual gratification."
The five-week federal trial in Brooklyn included testimony from witnesses who said they were sexually and physically abused by Kelly. The court also heard from people involved with orchestrating the disgraced R&B singer's 1994 marriage to the late singer Aaliyah when she was just 15 years old and he was an adult after she believed she'd gotten pregnant.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Kelly to more than 25 years behind bars, while his defense attorneys asked for 10 or fewer.
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More potential jurors were dismissed Tuesday from Donald's Trump's hush money case as lawyers worked for a second day to find a panel of New Yorkers to decide whether the Republican will become the first former president convicted of a crime.
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A couple who owned a Colorado funeral home where authorities last year discovered 190 decaying bodies were indicted on federal charges that they misspent nearly US$900,000 in pandemic relief funds on vacations, cosmetic surgery, jewelry and other personal expenses, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
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Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says she's urging Israel to de-escalate rising conflicts in the Middle East and not bomb Iran in retaliation for this past weekend's thwarted airstrikes.
The federal leader of the New Democrats is insisting his party's position on carbon pricing remains unchanged.
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NASA confirmed Monday that a mystery object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home last month was a chunk of space junk from equipment discarded at the International Space Station.
Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world's most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as 'arabica.'
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A portrait of Winston Churchill by an artist whose work the British leader loathed went on display Tuesday at Churchill's birthplace ahead of an auction in June.
Canadian 'Jeopardy!' champion Mattea Roach will return for the season annual 'Jeopardy! Masters' tournament.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the annual pace of housing starts in March declined seven per cent compared with February.
Tim Hortons is launching flatbread pizzas nationally in a bid to pick up more afternoon and evening customers.
A Vancouver woman whose company duped investors by promising big returns on real-estate deals that would house the homeless has been ordered to pay nearly $626,000 after the British Columbia Securities Commission deemed the operation a Ponzi scheme.
In Salman Rushdie's first book since the 2022 stabbing that hospitalized him and left him blind in one eye, the author wastes no time reliving the day he thought might be his last.
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A unique photo exhibit is putting cameras into the hands of survivors of domestic and sexual violence in Newfoundland and Labrador.
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