CHICAGO– Singer R. Kelly has been rightly sentenced to 20 years in prison for child sex convictions in Chicago, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
Jurors convicted the 2022 Grammy Award-winning R&B-singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, on three charges of producing child pornography and three charges of enticing minors to have sex.
In his appeal, Kelly argued that Illinois’ earlier and shorter statute of limitations on child sex charges should have applied to his Chicago case, rather than current law allowing charges while an accuser is still alive.
He also argued that the charges involving one accuser should have been tried separately from the charges against three other accusers, because of video evidence that became a central point in the Chicago trial.
Prosecutors have said the video showed Kelly abusing a girl. The accuser did not identify herself until Jane testified for the first time that she was 14 when the video was made.
The three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in Friday’s ruling that jurors acquitted Kelly on seven of the 13 charges against him “even after reviewing those abhorrent tapes.”
The appeals court also rejected Kelly’s argument that he should not have been prosecuted because the allegations occurred when Illinois law required prosecution of child sex crime charges within 10 years. The panel called it an attempt by Kelly to avoid charges entirely after she employed “a complex scheme to keep victims quiet.”
In a written statement, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said they plan to seek review of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court and “pursue all his appeals until we release R. Kelly.”
“We are disappointed in the ruling, but our fight is far from over,” she said.
Prosecutors in Kelly’s hometown of Chicago had sought an even harsher sentence, 25 years. They also wanted a judge to start that time only after Kelly completes a 30-year prison sentence imposed in New York in 2022 for federal racketeering and sex trafficking convictions.
Judge Harry Leinenweber denied that request and ordered that Kelly serve the 20 years from the Chicago case concurrently with the New York sentence.
Kelly has filed a separate appeal against the sentence in New York.
In oral arguments last month before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, attorney Jennifer Bonjean asked the panel to find that prosecutors improperly used a racketeering statute written to stop organized crime to go after the singer to go.
