R. Kelly asks U.S. Supreme Court to overturn sex crime convictions

R. Kelly The U.S. Supreme Court asked that his convictions for possessing child pornography and inducing sex from a minor be thrown out, arguing that the conduct he was accused of occurred decades ago and therefore the charges were outside the statute of limitations.

Here’s the thing… Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, when R. Kelly was charged in 2020 with possessing child pornography and having sex with an underage girl, he argued that the statute of limitations had run out.

However, prosecutors argue that a 2003 law, known as the PROTECT Act, makes the statute of limitations for child sex crimes indefinite.

Basically, Kelly’s lawyers Jennifer BonjeanIt argued that because the conduct for which Kelly is currently serving time occurred in the 1990s but the PROTECT Act was not passed until 2003, the Act’s expanded statute of limitations did not apply to the charges against him.

The PROTECT Act indefinitely extended the statute of limitations for alleged crimes committed after the law came into effect in 2003, but Congress specifically did not include a provision that would have allowed the law to apply to alleged conduct committed before 2003.

You may recall that Kelly was found guilty on six of 13 counts in 2020, three of which involved child pornography and three of which involved solicitation.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution to his alleged victims.