Lawyer for former singer and record producer R Kelly wanted the United States Supreme Court to throw out the musician’s convictions for possession of child porn and inducing minors to have sex.
Reports indicate that the lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, on Thursday, July 25, claimed in a petition that Kelly’s alleged acts “occurred decades earlier” and that the charges last year were “purportedly barred by the statute of limitations.”
According to other details on the matter, prosecutors turned down that argument, referencing the “Protect Act”— a 2003 law that declared the statute of limitations “indefinite for sex crimes against children.”
As reported, parts of Ms. Bonjeans’s petition argued that although Kelly was serving time for his crimes from the 1990s, the statute of limitations “does not apply to him because the “Protect Act” was passed in the early decades of the century.”
The lawyer reportedly wrote that “Congress did not explicitly include a clause that this law would also apply to crimes that occurred before 2003.”
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In 2020, Kelly was first accused of possessing child pornography and engaging in sexual acts with underage girls dating back to the mid to late-1990s.
The recent appeal follows his ongoing appeal of the New York 2021 sentencing, which argues, among other things, that Kelly was “unfairly charged” with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Born Robert Sylvester Kelly, the 57-year-old singer was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2023 in Chicago on charges of child pornography and enticement of minors for sex.
In June 2022, he was convicted to 30 years in prison for racketeering and sex trafficking charges outside of New York, but 19 years of the two sentences were to be served concurrently.
Per the sentence, the Storm Is Over crooner is expected to be released in 2045.
R Kelly is credited with prolific commercial success in R&B, hip hop, and pop music recordings, earning nicknames such as “the King of R&B”, “the King of Pop-Soul”, and “the Pied Piper of R&B”.
He received a Grammy Award nomination for his contributions to Michael Jackson’s 1995 single, “You Are Not Alone”, which earned a Guinness World Record as the first song to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100 in the chart’s history.
He sold over 75 million albums and singles worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time and the most successful R&B male artist of the 1990s.
Before his career ended in 2019, following his arrest and conviction, he was named the most successful R&B artist of the last 25 years by Billboard in 2011.
He won Grammy Awards, BET Awards, Soul Train Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, NAACP Image Awards, and American Music Awards
