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 to have sex.
His lawyers had argued that the charges against him were filed after a statute of limitations had expired. but a federal appeals court rejected those arguments in April and upheld his conviction and sentence.
In July, Kelly filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to hear his appeal, but on Monday the justices denied his request. No explanation was given for their denial, as is standard court procedure.
A federal grand jury was held in Chicago in September 2022 convicted Kelly of six charges of child pornography and child seduction for videos he made in which he sexually abused three teenage girls, including his 14-year-old goddaughter.
The same jury acquitted Kelly of seven other charges, including obstruction of justice, and accused him and two associates of rigging his 2008 child pornography trial in Cook County.
Kelly’s crimes took place in the 1990s, when federal law allowed prosecutors to bring charges until the victims turned 25, but Congress passed a law in 2003 that allowed charges to be brought until the victim’s death .
In their appeal, Kelly’s lawyers argued that Congress never intended the law to be applied retroactively, arguing that prosecutors should have charged her client no later than 2009, but prosecutors argued that the statute of limitations had been extended long before this in Kelly’s case would have expired.
The appeals court sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that “Congress has spoken clearly and directed us to apply the statute across the board.”
Meanwhile, Kelly is also appealing conviction for racketeering and sex trafficking in federal court in New York. The jury in that case convicted him of running a criminal enterprise aimed at sexually exploiting young women and children. An appeals court has yet to rule on the case.
Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the New York caseand most of his 20-year sentence in the Chicago case will run concurrently with that prison term.
The singer is serving his prison sentence at a medium-security federal prison center in Butner, North Carolina, and is expected to be released on December 21, 2045, when he would be nearly 79 years old.
