{"id":410,"date":"2024-04-30T00:10:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T00:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/r-kellys-sexual-abuse-conviction-in-chicago-upheld-on-appeal\/"},"modified":"2024-04-30T00:10:30","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T00:10:30","slug":"r-kellys-sexual-abuse-conviction-in-chicago-upheld-on-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/r-kellys-sexual-abuse-conviction-in-chicago-upheld-on-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"R. Kelly’s Sexual Abuse Conviction in Chicago Upheld On Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA federal appeals court on Friday (April 26) upheld R. Kelly\u2019s conviction on child pornography and enticement charges, rejecting his argument that the case against him was filed too late.<\/p>\n

\n\tEighteen months after a federal jury in Chicago found Kelly (Robert Sylvester Kelly) guilty, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the 2022 guilty verdict<\/a>, saying that he had been convicted by \u201can even-handed jury\u201d and that \u201cno statute of limitations saves him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor years, Robert Sylvester Kelly abused underage girls. By employing a complex scheme to keep victims quiet, he long evaded consequences,\u201d Judge Amy St. Eve<\/strong> wrote for a three-judge panel. \u201cIn recent years, though, those crimes caught up with him at last. But Kelly \u2014 interposing a statute-of-limitations defense \u2014 thinks he delayed the charges long enough to elude them entirely. The statute says otherwise, so we affirm his conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFriday\u2019s ruling affirms one of Kelly\u2019s two felony sex abuse convictions. The other one \u2014 a September 2021 guilty verdict on racketeering charges brought by federal prosecutors in New York \u2014 is currently pending on appeal.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the wake of Friday\u2019s decision, Kelly can now appeal the verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court. But such appeals face extremely long odds, as the high court hears only a tiny fraction of the petitions it receives.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard <\/em>on Friday, Kelly\u2019s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean<\/strong>, said: \u201cWe are disappointed in the ruling but our fight is far from over. We will seek review from the Supreme Court and continue to pursue all of his appellate remedies until we Free R. Kelly. You can bet on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter decades of accusations of sexual misconduct, Kelly was indicted in 2019 by federal prosecutors in both New York and Illinois. By the end of 2022, he had been convicted in both cases.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Brooklyn, the feds accused Kelly of violating the federal RICO statute (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) by orchestrating a long-running scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. After being convicted<\/a> in September 2021, Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Chicago, a different team of federal prosecutors 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. The judge later sentenced him to 20 years in prison, but the vast majority of that sentence will be served concurrently with the New York sentence.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn appealing the Chicago verdict, Kelly\u2019s attorneys argued that the case \u2014 over crimes that allegedly occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s \u2014 had been filed well past the statute of limitations that existed at the time, which barred child sex abuse charges after a victim\u2019s 25th<\/sup> birthday.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Friday\u2019s ruling, the judges chose instead to apply the modern statute of limitations, which extends through the life of the victim.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cKelly maintains that the old, pre-2003 statute of limitations should control,\u201d Judge St. Eve wrote. \u201cAll the inducement of minors in this case, he points out, took place when he could expect a more generous statute of limitations. The law does not support Kelly\u2019s position.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe appeals court also rejected several other arguments from Kelly, including one challenging the procedural fairness of his trial and another against the propriety of his sentence.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Kelly\u2019s Chicago verdict affirmed, attention now turns to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which is currently weighing his Brooklyn conviction. That case was argued in court last month, when Bonjean told the judges that the RICO case against Kelly had stretched federal racketeering laws \u201cto the point of absurdity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal appeals court on Friday (April 26) upheld R. Kelly\u2019s conviction on child pornography and enticement charges, rejecting his argument that the case against him was filed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[362,366,364,363,361,301,365],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-abuse","tag-appeal","tag-chicago","tag-conviction","tag-kellys","tag-sexual","tag-upheld"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","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=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}