R. Kelly asks Supreme Court to overturn sex crimes convictions

R. Kelly is asking the high court to toss his federal sex crimes convictions saying that the charges were past the statute of limitations.

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Kelly is serving a more than 30-year prison sentence in North Carolina, CNN reported.

His attorney Jennifer Bonjean petitioned the Supreme Court to throw out the conviction for possession of child pornography and enticing minors to engage in sexual activity.

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He was already serving a 30-year prison sentence on a conviction in New York when he was sentenced in Chicago in 2023. The Chicago case had a 20-year sentence, WLS reported.

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Bojean said that he was wrongly retroactively prosecuted under the PROTECT Act, passed in 2003 which set no limit to the statute of limitations for sex crimes involving minors.

She said that what her client was accused of happened in the 1990s, well before the PROTECT Act became law. Bojean said the act does not have a clause for crimes that happened before it was adopted, TMZ reported.

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A federal appeals court already upheld the conviction earlier this year, ruling that “it is not unconstitutional to apply a newer statute of limitations to old conduct when the defendant was subject to prosecution at the time of the change, as Kelly was in 2003,” CNN reported.

In addition to the prison sentence, Kelly was also ordered to pay damages to the victims, TMZ reported.

The New York conviction was for racketeering and sex trafficking, which is not part of the Supreme Court petition, CNN reported. He is serving both sentences concurrently and should be released in 2045, People magazine reported.