(Chicago) Singer R. Kelly was rightly sentenced to 20 years in prison for child sex convictions in Chicago, a US federal appeals court ruled Friday.
In 2022, a jury convicted the Grammy-winning R&B singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, of three counts of producing child pornography and three counts of inciting minors to sexual contact.
In his appeal, Mr. Kelly argued that Illinois’ old, shorter statute of limitations for child sex charges should have been applied in his case rather than a new law that allows charges as long as that a complainant is still alive.
He also said the charges involving one complainant should have been tried separately from the other three charges, because of the video evidence that became a central focus of the trial, held in Chicago.
State prosecutors said the video showed Mr. Kelly abusing a teenage girl. The complainant, identified as Jane, testified that she was 14 years old when the video was taken.
The three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago, wrote in their Friday ruling that jurors acquitted Kelly on seven of the 13 counts against him “even after watched these odious tapes.”
The appeals court rejected Mr. Kelly’s argument that he should not have been prosecuted because the complaints were filed more than ten years after the facts, the maximum allowed by law in Illinois at that time. for sex crimes against children.
The judges called the rhetoric an attempt to completely evade Mr. Kelly’s accusations, having “used an elaborate ploy to keep victims silent.”
In a written statement, Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said she would seek to have the decision overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and “take every opportunity to appeal the decision until that we freed R. Kelly.”
“We are disappointed by this verdict, but our fight is far from over,” she added.
Prosecutors in Chicago, R. Kelly’s hometown, had asked for an even harsher sentence of 25 years in prison. They also wanted a judge to add this sentence to another of 30 years handed down in 2022 in New York for sex trafficking and racketeering.
Judge Harry Leinenweber denied that request, ordering that Mr. Kelly serve the 20 years in prison from the Chicago case concurrently with those from the New York sentence.
Robert Sylvester Kelly also appealed the sentence handed down in New York.
Last month, his lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, told judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that prosecutors had improperly used a racketeering law written to stop organized crime to s take it out on the singer.