Lawyers for R&B singer R. Kelly filed an appeal of his federal sex crimes conviction with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, arguing that his conviction should be overturned.
Kelly, who is already serving a 30-year sentence for sex trafficking in a 2021 case in North Carolina, was also convicted in 2022 of producing child pornography, adding a concurrent 20-year sentence. Tuesday’s appeal applies to the federal child pornography case tried in Chicago.
The singer was prosecuted under the PROTECT Act, a 2003 law that extended the federal statute of limitations for sexual crimes involving minors. Kelly’s lawyers argued that because her alleged actions occurred in the 1990s, before the law was passed, the statute of limitations should have expired.
“The defendant’s accusations are time-barred,” said the petition for certiorari reads. “Because Congress did not expressly state that the PROTECT Act was to apply retroactivity and even rejected a version of the bill that included a retroactive provision, the PROTECT Act did not extend the statute of limitations and Defendant was convicted of statute-barred crimes.”
Kelly previously appealed his conviction using the same argument in a federal trial court, but the appeal was rejected at both the district and appellate levels.
The Supreme Court hears few of the cases offered to it each year. If the court agrees to hear the case, it will be judged in the session that will begin in October.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
