Left inset: R. Kelly (Chicago Police Department). Right: U.S. Supreme Court (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images).
Robert Sylvester Kelly, the R&B singer better known as R. Kelly, is looking to overturn his Illinois federal convictions for child pornography and the sexual abuse of teenage girls by making the case to the U.S. Supreme Court that Congress, when extending the statute of limitations on such offenses in 2003, did not “expressly” intend to retroactively punish him for conduct going back to the 1990s.
In a petition for a writ of certiorari last Thursday, Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonjean submitted one question for the justices to answer, should the nine take an interest in the case:
Consistent with the presumption against retroactive legislation, whether the 2003 amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 3283, which extended the statute of limitations for sex offenses against children, was inapplicable to charged conduct from the 1990s, such that Defendant’s charges were brought outside the applicable statute of limitations.
Kelly, now 57 and on track to be released from prison in 2045 after serving out punishment for his 2021 racketeering and sex-trafficking convictions, was separately convicted in 2022 of six crimes, three child pornography offenses and three counts for knowingly enticing teenage girls to “engage in […] sexual activity.”
Victims Jane, Nia, and Pauline, pseudonyms for each, testified that Kelly groomed them and sexually abused them at his studio over a period of years, from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Pauline, for example, testified that she and Jane went to middle school together and that Jane introduced her to the R. Kelly in 1998, when they were 14 and he was 30. Pauline said she once walked in on Kelly and a naked Jane at the singer’s Chicago home.
According to Kelly’s lawyer, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit got it wrong in April when it “sanctioned the retroactive application of the 2003 amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 3283 (‘the PROTECT Act’) which extended the statute of limitations for child sex offenses[.]”
The petition said that “at the time of the charged conduct, the statute of limitations for offenses involving sexual abuse were extended until the victim/minor reached 25 years old.”
“Thus, section 3283 extended the five-year limitations period for the conduct alleged in counts one through three and nine of the superseding indictment until September 2009 when Jane reached her 25th birthday. The statute of limitations for count ten was extended until 2005 when Nia turned 25 years old, and the statute of limitations for count twelve was extended until October 2009 when Pauline turned 25 years old,” the petition continued. “Defendant was not charged until more than a decade after the expiration of the statute of limitations under the applicable law at the time of the alleged conduct.”
In comment to Law&Crime, Bonjean reiterated her position that “statutes should be strictly construed.”
“Prosecutors should not be permitted to take liberties with statutes that are plainly written on their face,” Bonjean said.
The Seventh Circuit’s ruling months ago said it was clear that the “statute of limitations for sex crimes against children extends through the life of the victim,” writing, “Jane, Pauline, and Nia are still alive”:
Recall that Kelly’s abuse of these victims took place in the 1990s and early 2000s. At that time prosecutors had to move faster: the statute of limitations barred prosecutions after the victim’s 25th birthday. The law changed to the above-quoted version in 2003 with the PROTECT Act, thereby extending the window to the life of the victim. See Pub. L. 108–21, title II, § 202, Apr. 30, 2003. By that time Jane, Pauline, and Nia had all turned eighteen, though none had yet turned 25. Therefore, when the PROTECT Act passed in 2003, the government could have prosecuted Kelly for the abuse he had perpetrated against Jane, Pauline, and Nia while they were underage, even though the ongoing contact was not the illegal inducement of a minor.
Putting the pieces together, Kelly maintains that the old, pre-2003 statute of limitations should control. All 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’s position.
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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