R. Kelly’s ex-manager will serve a one-year prison sentence for calling in a shooting threat that stopped the Manhattan screening of the Surviving R. Kelly docuseries in 2018.
Donnell Russell, 47, was sentenced on Monday to one year in federal prison after he told a Manhattan federal judge he made bad judgment calls by working with Kelly on what Russell described as “intellectual property matters.”
“I’m not a horrible person,” Russell said.
Russell is already set to serve a year in prison for repeatedly trying to suppress sexual abuse claims against Kelly. Monday’s sentence will not add time to that punishment, prosecutors said.
Russell worked with the Grammy-winning singer as he faced multiple allegations and a sex trafficking conviction.
According to prosecutors, Russell claimed over the phone that someone at the event had a gun and intended to fire it, leading to the screening’s cancellation and a theater evacuation. Defense attorneys argued that there were multiple calls to the theater that night and there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Russell broke the law.
A jury convicted Russell in July for threatening physical harm through interstate communication, and days later he pleaded guilty to an interstate stalking charge involving one of Kelly’s victims. A federal judge sentenced Russell in November to 20 months in prison for threatening that woman through text messages and then publishing explicit photos of her online.
Kelly is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence as of June after being found guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering.