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R. Kelly is asking the Supreme Court to toss out his previous convictions after he was found guilty of crimes that allegedly happened outside the statute of limitations.
In a petition filed last week that was unsealed Monday, July 29, the Chicago singer's attorney Jennifer Bonjean argued that the statute of limitations had expired on the crimes he was convicted of, which allegedly happened in the 1990s and early 2000s. Kelly was charged in 2019 with possessing child pornography and child enticement charges and was ultimately convicted in 2022. After it was denied in a lower court earlier this year, Bonjean has taken the appeal to the highest court in the country.
“This Court should grant review to reaffirm the long-standing principles that criminal limitations are to be liberally interpreted in favor of repose and that legislation is presumed to apply prospectively, regardless of Ex Post Facto considerations unless Congress expressly states otherwise,” Bonjean wrote in the petition.
During Kelly's trial, prosecutors cited a 2003 law called the PROTECT Act that made the statute of limitations indefinite for child sex crimes. The law expands the timeframe for crimes committed after 2003, but there are no directives about crimes that occurred before the act was signed into law. Bonjean told TMZ in an interview that Kelly's defense team raised the issue before his trial started, but their motion was denied.
"The government's position is that they admit they applied a statute of limitations that did not exist at the time the conduct was allegedly committed, but they're saying 'we were permitted to extend it," Bonjean said. "It didn't harm him or violate what's known as the Ex Post Facto clause. And our position is not so fast."
Kelly was ultimately convicted in 2022 of three counts of child pornography-related charges and three child enticement charges in Chicago. He was also convicted of eight counts of sex trafficking and one of racketeering in New York City in 2021. He was sentenced to 20 years in Illinois, which he's serving concurrently with his 30-year sentence in New York. The Supreme Court will reportedly decide whether or not they want to hear Kelly's case in a few months.