A federal appeals court on Friday (April 26) upheld R. Kelly’s conviction on child pornography and enticement charges, rejecting his argument that the case against him was filed too late.
Eighteen months after a federal jury in Chicago found Kelly (Robert Sylvester Kelly) guilty, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the 2022 guilty verdict, saying that he had been convicted by “an even-handed jury” and that “no statute of limitations saves him.”
“For years, Robert Sylvester Kelly abused underage girls. By employing a complex scheme to keep victims quiet, he long evaded consequences,” Judge Amy St. Eve wrote for a three-judge panel. “In recent years, though, those crimes caught up with him at last. But Kelly — interposing a statute-of-limitations defense — thinks he delayed the charges long enough to elude them entirely. The statute says otherwise, so we affirm his conviction.”
Friday’s ruling affirms one of Kelly’s two felony sex abuse convictions. The other one — a September 2021 guilty verdict on racketeering charges brought by federal prosecutors in New York — is currently pending on appeal.
In the wake of Friday’s decision, Kelly can now appeal the verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court. But such appeals face extremely long odds, as the high court hears only a tiny fraction of the petitions it receives.
In a statement to Billboard on Friday, Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said: “We are disappointed in the ruling but our fight is far from over. We will seek review from the Supreme Court and continue to pursue all of his appellate remedies until we Free R. Kelly. You can bet on that.”
After decades of accusations of sexual misconduct, Kelly was indicted in 2019 by federal prosecutors in both New York and Illinois. By the end of 2022, he had been convicted in both cases.
In Brooklyn, the feds accused Kelly of violating the federal RICO statute (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) by orchestrating a long-running scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. After being convicted in September 2021, Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In Chicago, a different team of federal prosecutors accused Kelly of violating child pornography laws, enticing minors for sex and obstructing justice by upending a 2008 criminal trial. Though he was acquitted on certain counts, Kelly was convicted in September 2022. The judge later sentenced him to 20 years in prison, but the vast majority of that sentence will be served concurrently with the New York sentence.
In appealing the Chicago verdict, Kelly’s attorneys argued that the case — over crimes that allegedly occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s — had been filed well past the statute of limitations that existed at the time, which barred child sex abuse charges after a victim’s 25th birthday.
But in Friday’s ruling, the judges chose instead to apply the modern statute of limitations, which extends through the life of the victim.
“Kelly maintains that the old, pre-2003 statute of limitations should control,” Judge St. Eve wrote.
“All the inducement of minors in this case, he points out, took place when he could expect a more generous statute of limitations. The law does not support Kelly’s position.”
The appeals court also rejected several other arguments from Kelly, including one challenging the procedural fairness of his trial and another against the propriety of his sentence.
With Kelly’s Chicago verdict affirmed, attention now turns to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which is currently weighing his Brooklyn conviction. That case was argued in court last month, when Bonjean told the judges that the RICO case against Kelly had stretched federal racketeering laws “to the point of absurdity.”
