R. Kelly, the disgraced R&B singer currently serving over 30 years in a North Carolina prison, is seeking intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge his federal sex crimes convictions. Kelly’s defense attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, has filed a petition asking the high court to overturn his 2023 conviction in Chicago for possession of child pornography and enticing minors to engage in sexual activity, arguing that these charges are barred by the statute of limitations.
Kelly, who is already serving a 30-year sentence for sex trafficking following his 2021 conviction in New York, was sentenced to 20 years in Chicago in 2023 for child pornography offenses. Bonjean’s petition argues that Kelly’s charges should be dismissed because they were based on conduct from the 1990s, before the passage of the PROTECT Act in 2003, which extended the statute of limitations indefinitely for sex crimes involving minors.
“Defendant’s charges were time barred,” the petition asserts. “Because Congress did not expressly state that the PROTECT Act should apply retroactively 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 time-barred offenses.”
Bonjean has previously attempted to appeal Kelly’s conviction on similar grounds, but a federal appeals court upheld the conviction in April, ruling that applying a newer statute of limitations to older conduct is not unconstitutional if the defendant was subject to prosecution at the time of the law’s enactment.
With that appeal rejected, Bonjean has now escalated the case to the Supreme Court. The high court is known for accepting only a small number of petitions each year, and the Department of Justice will have an opportunity to respond and contest the petition.
Jennifer Bonjean, who successfully represented Bill Cosby in his 2021 appeal based on a legal technicality, is also currently handling Harvey Weinstein’s appeal in Los Angeles. Weinstein’s New York conviction was overturned earlier this year due to issues related to the admission of certain witnesses.
