{"id":2086,"date":"2024-07-31T21:18:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T21:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/r-kelly-asks-supreme-court-to-overturn-sex-crimes-convictions\/"},"modified":"2024-07-31T21:18:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T21:18:13","slug":"r-kelly-asks-supreme-court-to-overturn-sex-crimes-convictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/r-kelly-asks-supreme-court-to-overturn-sex-crimes-convictions\/","title":{"rendered":"R. Kelly Asks Supreme Court to Overturn Sex Crimes Convictions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tR. Kelly is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his convictions on child pornography and enticement charges, arguing the case should have been barred by the statute of limitations.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a petition filed with the high court on Monday (July 29), attorneys for the disgraced R&B singer asked the justices to take up his case and toss out an April ruling by a lower appeals court, which said that \u201cno statute of limitations saves him\u201d from his 2022 convictions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tKelly\u2019s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean<\/strong>, argued that an updated federal law extending the statute of limitations, passed in 2003, could not be applied retroactively to Kelly\u2019s alleged crimes, which occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRetroactive application of the 2003 amendment not only fly in the face of congressional intent,\u201d Bonjean writes. \u201cIt violates notions of fundamental fairness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLike all appeals to the Supreme Court, Kelly\u2019s case faces long odds. The high court receives thousands of petitions per year and only decides to hear a tiny fraction them.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis week\u2019s petition deals with only one of Kelly\u2019s two sets of felony sex abuse convictions. The other one \u2014 a September 2021 guilty verdict<\/a> on racketeering charges brought by prosecutors in New York that resulted in a 30-year prison sentence \u2014 is currently pending on appeal before a lower appellate court.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the current case, a different team of federal prosecutors from Chicago accused Kelly of violating child pornography laws, enticing minors for sex and obstructing justice by upending a 2008 criminal trial. Though he was acquitted on certain counts, Kelly was convicted in September 2022 and later sentenced to 20 years in prison; the vast majority of that sentence will be served concurrently with the New York sentence.<\/p>\n

\n\tBonjean, who famously won a 2021 ruling at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturning Bill Cosby\u2018s 2018 sex assault conviction, has repeatedly argued that Kelly is innocent and that she will take his cases all the way to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn doing so on Monday, she focused on the PROTECT Act \u2014 a 2003 federal statute aimed at preventing child abuse. Among other changes, the 2003 law eliminated the statutes of limitations for child sex abuse victims, extending the right to sue through the entire life of the victim.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Bonjean said the PROTECT Act was not written to apply retroactively to crimes allegedly committed before it was passed. Without a clear intention from Congress to apply it to past crimes, she wrote, a law must be considered to only apply to future wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis court has explained that the aversion to retroactive rulemaking is deeply rooted in our jurisprudence and embodies a legal doctrine centuries older than our Republic,\u201d she wrote. \u201cElementary considerations of fairness dictate that individuals should have an opportunity to know what the law is and to conform their conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R. Kelly is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his convictions on child pornography and enticement charges, arguing the case should have been barred by the statute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1051,330,143,2814,1346,942,461,533],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-asks","tag-convictions","tag-court","tag-crimes","tag-kelly","tag-overturn","tag-sex","tag-supreme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}