R. Kelly judge shoots down request for $850,000 in attorneys’ fees from singer’s acquitted ex-manager

The federal judge in Chicago who presided over last summer’s trial of R. Kelly and two of the singer’s former employees shot down a request Monday from one of the workers to have the government pay $850,000 in attorneys’ fees.

The trial ended with a conviction for Kelly but an acquittal for former assistant Milton “June” Brown and former business manager Derrel McDavid, who made the request to U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.

Leinenweber found that the case brought by prosecutors “had reasonable and probable cause and was not vexatious, frivolous or in bad faith.”

“The jury assessed the testimony, evidence and credibility of the witnesses, and reached a conclusion on those grounds,” Leinenweber wrote. “McDavid argues that the government’s case was logically impossible, but the court disagreed in trial and it disagrees now.”

That jury convicted Kelly in September on three child pornography counts and three counts of enticing minors into criminal sexual activity.

However, it rejected allegations that Kelly conspired to thwart his earlier 2008 trial in Cook County, as well as the claim Kelly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a frantic hunt for incriminating videos amounting to child pornography. 

McDavid and Brown faced conspiracy charges but were acquitted.

McDavid spent more than two days on the witness stand, and his attorney argued in October that prosecutors “told the jury a story that had to be false based on the collective testimony of its witnesses.”

Kelly’s sentencing is set for Feb. 23.