R. Kelly is asking President Donald Trump to commute his federal prison sentence, marking the first formal request in the singer’s effort to secure an early release.
According to CBS Chicago, Kelly’s attorneys submitted a clemency application to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney earlier this year. The request is listed as pending, and no decision has been announced.
Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, is serving a 30-year federal prison sentence after his 2021 conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in New York. He was sentenced the following year.
In 2022, a federal jury in Chicago also convicted Kelly on child pornography and enticement charges. He later received a 20-year sentence, with all but one year ordered to run concurrently with his New York sentence.
As theGrio previously reported, Kelly’s legal challenges have repeatedly failed. A federal appeals court upheld his Chicago conviction in 2024, followed by a separate ruling in 2025 affirming his New York convictions and 30-year sentence.
Kelly’s legal team has sought his release before. ABC7 Chicago reported that his attorney appealed publicly to Trump last year while arguing Kelly’s life was in danger in prison, though no formal clemency request had been filed at the time.
Kelly remains incarcerated at a federal prison in North Carolina. If his commutation request is denied, he is expected to remain in prison until 2045.
