NEWYORK –
R. Kelly’s one-time manager was sentenced to a year in prison on Monday for making a phone call threatening to shoot, causing the screening of a disastrous documentary about the R&B star to be suspended.
The punishment will not add to the time that former manager Donnell Russell has made available to serve in another attempt to stamp out the sexual abuse allegations against Kelly.
Russell worked with Kelly as the Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling singer began to face what would become a wave of accusations and eventually sex trafficking convictions. Prosecutors said Russell repeatedly sought to quash the charges.
Russell told a Manhattan federal judge on Monday that he had “made bad judgments” after he began working with Kelly on what Russell described as intellectual property issues.
“I’m not a terrible person,” Russell said.
The theater threat came shortly before the scheduled start of Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” series premiere in Manhattan in December 2018, highlighting allegations that Kelly sexually abused women and girls. A live panel discussion, including some of the women featured in the documentary, will follow the screening.
The phone call suggested that someone at the event had a gun and was about to open fire. The screening was canceled and the theater had to be evacuated.
In that case, a grand jury convicted Russell in July of threatening physical harm through interstate communications, and acquitted him of conspiracy charges. Russell’s defense argued that there were numerous phone calls to the theater that day and that there was not enough evidence to prove him guilty.
Days after the grand jury’s verdict, Russell pleaded guilty to federal spying in relation to one of Kelly’s sex abuse accusers. A federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Russell last month to 20 months in prison for conduct that included sending threatening messages to the woman and then publishing sexually explicit photos of her online.
Russell, 47, is due to turn himself in next year to serve his sentence in both cases at once.
Meanwhile, Kelly was sentenced in June to 30 years in prison in her sex trafficking and fraud case.
