R. Kelly’s lawyers have taken their fight to the Supreme Court, filing an appeal on Tuesday to overturn the R&B singer’s federal convictions for producing child pornography.
Kelly is currently serving a combined 50-year sentence for sex trafficking and child pornography convictions, with the latter stemming from a 2022 trial in Chicago. The appeal specifically targets the child pornography case, which was prosecuted under the PROTECT Act, a law enacted in 2003 to broaden the federal statute of limitations for sex crimes involving minors.
At the heart of the appeal is the argument that the alleged crimes, which occurred in the 1990s, are time-barred. Kelly’s attorneys contend that the PROTECT Act did not explicitly state that it should be applied retroactively, and that Congress even rejected a version of the bill that included a retroactive provision.
The petition for certiorari argues that “the PROTECT Act did not extend the statute of limitations and Defendant was convicted of time-barred offenses.” This is not the first time Kelly’s lawyers have made this argument, having previously appealed the convictions in a lower federal court, only to be rejected at both the district and appellate levels.
The Supreme Court receives numerous appeals each year, but only a select few are accepted for review. If the court decides to take on Kelly’s case, it would be heard during the upcoming session, which begins in October.
