The Supreme Court rejected a last-hope appeal Monday from R. Kelly on his conviction and 20-year sentence for child sex crimes in Chicago.
Kelly, 57, has lost every appeal in the case since he was convicted in September 2022 on three counts of producing child sexual abuse images and three counts of enticing minors for sex.
The Supreme Court justices provided no explanation for their decision — as is customary — and none publicly dissented.
Kelly’s legal team argued in its appeals that his conviction violated the statute of limitations. Federal laws passed in 2003 allow child victims of sex assault to come forward at any time during their lives. Kelly’s team argued the conduct he was convicted of occurred in the 1990s.
“No statute of limitations saves him, and the resulting sentence was procedurally proper and — especially under these appalling circumstances — substantively fair,” the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals wrote in rejecting Kelly’s attempt earlier this year to get the conviction tossed.
Kelly has also appealed his sex trafficking and racketeering convictions in New York, along with their 30-year prison sentence. The Supreme Court did not rule Monday on that case.
After years as a music superstar, Kelly was indicted in New York and Chicago in 2019. His New York case was handled first, and he was convicted in September 2021 on nine counts of violating the Mann Act and the RICO Act. The next year, he was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
After that case, Kelly stood trial in Chicago, where a woman described how he had groomed and abused her while she was 14 years old. In September 2022, he was convicted in that case, and the next year he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, to run concurrently with his New York sentence.
Prior to the criminal cases, Kelly had been publicly accused of having relationships with underage girls. He was charged with child pornography in Chicago in 2002 but acquitted at trial in 2008.
Additionally, Kelly attempted to marry the singer Aaliyah in 1994 when she was 15 years old and he was 27, but the marriage was annulled because of Aaliyah’s age.
The later criminal investigations began after a documentary, “Surviving R. Kelly,” was released in January 2019. Kelly, whose legal first name is Robert, has consistently denied all the allegations.
The Supreme Court began its 2024-25 term on Monday and rejected several notable appeals, including another from notorious pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli.