R. Kelly is turning to a legal loophole in his efforts to overturn his sex crime convictions.
TMZ reported on Tuesday (July 30) that the disgraced R&B legend has petitioned the United States Supreme Court to throw out his convictions based on the fact that his alleged crimes occurred decades ago and the charges therefore fall outside the statute of limitations.
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Because Kelly was convicted for incidents dating back to the mid 1990s, the singer’s team is arguing that the PROTECT Act, which he was charged with violating, doesn’t apply to his case since it didn’t become a law until 2003 — despite prosecutors successfully arguing that the law’s statue of limitations are indefinite.
Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said that the Act’s expanded statute of limitations doesn’t apply to the charges against her client.
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That’s because Congress didn’t include a clause allowing the law to be applied to alleged conduct committed before 2003 — only after.
The Supreme Court will reportedly decide whether to hear the appeal in the coming months.
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Back in 2022, a grand jury found R. Kelly guilty on six of the 13 federal charges he was facing, which included three child pornography charges for sexually abusing four girls — three of whom were minors.
They also found the Chicago native guilty of making videos of himself sexually assaulting his 14-year-old goddaughter, which resulted in another three charges for producing sex tapes with a minor.
He was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Chicago judge. Kellz, however, scored a victory when the judge ruled that all but one year would be served concurrent to the 30-year sentence he’s currently serving in New York on racketeering charges.
In a separate legal battle, the “Ignition” hitmaker recently sued the federal government in an attempt to get his commissary funds back after they were allegedly seized to satisfy a judgment against him.
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Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Heather Williams, one of Kelly’s sexual abuse accusers, was entitled to access his label fund, reportedly valued at $1.5 million in 2020, before Midwest Commercial Funding, a property manager that won its own separate $3.5 million ruling against Kelly over unpaid rent on a Chicago studio.
Months later, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly signed an order demanding that Kelly and his label, Universal Music Group, turn over more than $500,000 in royalties. The order previously demanded that he turn over $28,000, which was in his prison canteen.
