Photo Credit: Ian Hutchinson
Attorneys for R. Kelly have filed an appeal to his sex crime convictions with the Supreme Court, arguing they fall outside the statute of limitations.
Legal representatives for disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly, whose legal name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, have filed an appeal to his federal sex crimes convictions with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, July 31, arguing his conviction should be thrown out due to the statute of limitations.
The singer was prosecuted under the PROTECT Act, a 2003 law which expanded the federal statute of limitations for sex crimes involving minors. His attorneys argue that because his alleged crimes occurred in the 1990s, before the law was passed, the statute of limitations for those crimes should have expired.
Kelly is serving a 30-year sentence for sex trafficking and racketeering from a 2021 federal New York trial, as well as a simultaneous 20-year sentence in 2022 in Chicago for producing child sexual abuse material. Tuesday’s appeal refers specifically to the federal child sexual abuse material case in Chicago.
The petition argues that Kelly was not charged until “more than a decade after the expiration of the statute of limitations under the applicable law at the time of the alleged conduct.” R. Kelly was found guilty in September 2022 on six counts of federal child pornography charges in Chicago.
“Because Congress did not expressly state that the PROTECT Act should apply retroactively and even rejected a version of the bill that included a retroactive provision, the PROTECT Act did not extend the statute of limitations and [Kelly] was convicted of time-barred offenses,” the petition reads. “Federal law imposes a five-year limitations period for most non-capital offenses.”
Previously, Kelly has appealed the conviction in a lower court, using the same argument. However, that appeal was rejected at both the district and appellate court in Chicago.
It’s notable that the Supreme Court hears very few of the cases presented to it each year. Kelly’s case, should the Court accept to hear it, would be tried in its session starting in October.
