Charged in 2020 with possessing child pornography and soliciting underage girls to engage in sexual activity during the mid-to-late 1990s, R. Kelly is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his conviction. The disgraced singer is reportedly arguing that his alleged misconduct occurred decades ago and that his allegations were statutes of limitations that had run their course.
In contrast, prosecutors countered by claiming that a 2003 law – the PROTECT Act – made the statute of limitations for child sex crimes indefinite. In 2023, a federal appeals court in Chicago sentenced the singer to 20 years in prison for the child sex abuse offense, including one year to run consecutively with the 30-year sentence already served for sex trafficking and racketeering in the Eastern District of New York.
As TMZ reported on Tuesday, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean is at it again, arguing that the PROTECT Act’s expansive statute of limitations doesn’t apply to the case against him because the act wasn’t passed until 2003, while the conduct for which he’s now being punished happened in the ’90s.
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About PROTECT Act 2003
The Justice Department’s official fact sheet considers the act “a historic milestone for our nation’s children” because it “substantially strengthens law enforcement’s ability to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and punish violent crimes committed against children.” After it took effect in 2003, it extended the statute of limitations for alleged crimes indefinitely.
Conviction and sentencing of R. Kelly
R&B singer Robert Sylvester Kelly was initially born. convicted Kelly pleaded guilty in 2022 to three counts of producing child pornography and three counts of luring minors for sex. The four-week trial in Chicago revealed that Kelly had induced several underage girls to engage in sexual activity. He abused his victims for several years after meeting them in the late 1990s, at times recording some of the abuse on videotape. Kelly also reportedly took measures to hide his abuse and silence his alleged victims.
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He eventually appealed the conviction, arguing that Illinois’ shorter statute of limitations should have applied to his case. However, the appeals court rejected his argument, calling it an attempt by the singer to “evade charges after employing a complex scheme to keep his victims silent.”
In 2020, Kelly was convicted on six of 13 counts – three for child pornography and the remaining three for luring. Along with the 20-year sentence, he was ordered to pay thousands of dollars in restitution to the alleged victims. His sentencing in Chicago in 2022 focused on video evidence that allegedly showed Kelly abusing a 14-year-old girl, according to first-time testimony. At the time, she identified herself only as Jane.
