Supreme Court won't hear appeal of R. Kelly's child sex crime conviction in Chicago
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied singer R. Kelly's petition to consider an appeal of his conviction on federal sex crime charges in Chicago.
Kelly, 57, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for his conviction on three counts of producing child pornography and three counts of enticing children for sex.
His attorneys had argued the charges against him were filed after a statute of limitations had expired, but a federal appeals court in April rejected those arguments and upheld his conviction and sentence.
In July, Kelly filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to take up his appeal, but on Monday the justices denied his petition. No explanation was given for their denial, as is standard procedure for the court.
In September 2022, a federal jury in Chicago convicted Kelly of six counts of child pornography and child enticement for videos he made of himself sexually abusing three teenage girls, including his 14-year-old goddaughter.
The same jury acquitted Kelly of seven other charges, including obstruction of justice, accusing him and two associates of rigging his 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County.
Kelly's crimes happened in the 1990s, when federal law allowed prosecutors to file charges up until victims turned 25 years old, but Congress passed a law in 2003 allowing charges to be filed up until the victim's death.
In their appeal, Kelly's attorneys argued Congress never meant for the law to be applied retroactively, claiming prosecutors should have charged her client no later than 2009, but prosecutors argued the statute of limitations was expanded long before it would have expired in Kelly's case.
The appeals court sided with prosecutors, finding "Congress has spoken clearly, instructing us to apply the statute across the board."
Meantime, Kelly is also appealing his conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in federal court in New York. The jury in that case convicted him of running a criminal enterprise to sexually exploit young women and children. An appeals court has yet to rule in that case.
Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the New York case, and most of his 20-year sentence in the Chicago case is running concurrently to that prison term.
The singer is serving his prison sentence at a medium-security federal correctional center in Butner, North Carolina, and is expected to be released on Dec. 21, 2045, when he would be nearly 79 years old.