A Chicago court denied an appeal by the disgraced R&B singer Robert Kelly, known as R Kelly, to overturn his 20-year sentence for a child sex conviction in a ruling on Friday, April 26, 2024.
R Kelly, convicted on three charges of producing child sexual abuse images and three charges of enticing minors for sex, argued that Illinois’ old statute of limitations should have been applied, rather than the current law allowing charges while an accuser is still alive.
The old Illinois statute required prosecuting child sex crime charges within 10 years.
However, the appeals court dismissed this argument, describing it as an attempt by Kelly to evade charges “after employing a complex scheme to keep victims quiet.”
Kelly also contended that charges related to one accuser should have been separate from those involving three other accusers due to video evidence central to the Chicago trial.
Prosecutors asserted that the video depicted Kelly abusing a girl, identified as Jane, who testified for the first time, stating she was 14 when the video was recorded.
Despite Kelly’s arguments, the three-judge panel from the US appeals court pointed out that jurors acquitted him on seven of the 13 counts, “even after viewing those abhorrent tapes.”