R. Kelly’s attorney has petitioned the United States Supreme Court to overturn his convictions for possession of child pornography and inducing minors to have sex. The 57-year-old singer, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Chicago in February 2023 for these charges.
In June 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years for racketeering and sex trafficking in New York. With 19 years of the sentences to be served concurrently, Kelly is expected to be released in 2045, according to People.
On Thursday, July 25, Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, filed a petition arguing that his charges from last year should be dismissed due to the statute of limitations. Bonjean contended that Kelly’s alleged acts, dating back to the mid to late-1990s, occurred decades earlier and that the legal window for prosecuting these offenses had closed.
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Kelly was first accused in 2020 of possessing child pornography and engaging in sexual acts with underage girls. Prosecutors countered Kelly’s statute of limitations defense by citing the PROTECT ACT, a 2003 law that removes the statute of limitations for sex crimes against children.
However, Kelly’s attorney argued in her petition that the PROTECT ACT shouldn’t apply to Kelly’s 1990s crimes, as the law was enacted after those offenses. Bonjean pointed out that Congress did not explicitly state that the law would apply retroactively to crimes committed before 2003.
“Because Congress did not expressly state that the PROTECT Act should apply retroactivity and even rejected a version of the bill that included a retroactive provision, the PROTECT Act did not extend the statute of limitations and Defendant was convicted of time-barred offenses,” read the petition.
Kelly’s legal team has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his appeal, but the court is not obligated to take the case. This appeal follows his ongoing challenge of the 2021 New York sentencing.
Kelly’s first appeal contends he was unfairly charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for allegedly leading a group that recruited women and girls for illegal sexual activity and child pornography, according to the Associated Press.
“This was not a collection of people who had a purpose to recruit girls for sexual abuse or child pornography,” Bonjean said, per the Associated Press. “Whether they turned a blind eye, whether some of them suspected that some of these girls were underage, that’s a whole different matter.”
“And once we get into that sort of territory, where we’re going to say that constitutes a RICO enterprise, well we have a lot of organizations — we have a lot of frat houses — we have all types of organizations that are now going to become RICO enterprises,” she added.
