NO, R. KELLY, YOU’LL STAY IN JAIL, SAYS ILLINOIS FED COURT
A lawyer for disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly said she plans to seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court after his 20-year sentence for child sex crime convictions was upheld by a federal appeals court on Friday.
The imprisoned “I Believe I Can Fly” singer was convicted in Chicago in 2022 on multiple charges of producing child pornography and enticement of minors.
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean argued Friday that Illinois’ previous 10-year statute of limitations — rather than the state’s current statute on such crimes — should have shielded the Chicago native from the charges against him. Under the present laws, child victims have their entire lives to come forward.
A three-judge panel in Chicago disagreed, accusing Kelly of “employing a complex scheme to keep victims quiet” in order to delay justice for decades. Sexual misconduct accusations against Kelly date back to the 1990s.
“No statute of limitations saves him, and the resulting sentence was procedurally proper and — especially under these appalling circumstances — substantively fair,” the court wrote in its decision.
Prosecutors had charged Kelly with 13 crimes and asked for an even tougher sentence of 25 years. The appellate court noted that jurors acquitted Kelly on more than half of those charges, even after viewing “abhorrent tapes” involving Kelly abusing minors. Kelly has admitted to no wrongdoing. “We are disappointed in the ruling, but our fight is far from over,” Attorney Bonjean said in a written statement, adding that she plans to petition the nation’s highest court to review Kelly’s case as his defense pursues all “appellate remedies until we free R. Kelly.”
Kelly is also appealing his 30-year sentence in New York City, which runs concurrent to the one he’s serving in his hometown. In September 2021, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Kelly on all nine counts charging him with sex trafficking and exploitation of minors.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York called Kelly the leader of a criminal enterprise that included an “entourage of individuals who served as managers, bodyguards, accountants, drivers, personal assistants and runners for the defendant” who enabled or ignored his predatory conduct.
In arguments last month, Kelly’s defense team said that prosecutors in the case failed to prove Kelly headed up a racketeering organization, because his employees didn’t know the age of his young victims.
“If we win [the appeal] in New York, he will be entitled to resentencing in Illinois,” his attorney said in a statement to TMZ on Friday. “This story is far from over.”
Kelly is currently being held at the Federal Correctional Institution Butner Medium I in North Carolina. “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and disgraced financier Bernie Madoff also called that prison home.
Kelly is scheduled for release in December 2045.