TRACKING___R&B singer R. Kelly has cited the coronavirus in asking a federal judge to free him from a federal jail in Chicago as he awaits trial on alleged child p*rn-ography and other charges.
Sanitizer and even soap is hard to come by in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, with most of its 700 inmates held in small, two-man cells that make the kind of social distancing called for to thwart the transmission of COVID-19 impossible, the filing in U.S. District Court in Chicago says.
Kelly, 53, faces several dozen counts of state and federal s*xual misconduct charges in Illinois, Minnesota and New York, from s*xual assault to heading a racketeering scheme aimed at supplying him with girls.
According to his lawyer, while the MCC barred most visitors on March 13, there are few detectable protocols for screening lawyers, guards and new detainees still entering the facility to check if they might be infected, the filing says. The visiting floor has sanitizer, but a sign next to the single bottle available says, “STAFF ONLY…”
