A federal appellate court in Chicago has upheld R. Kelly’s conviction and 20-year prison sentence over claims of alleged child sex crimes. Lawyers for the disgraced singer argued that U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber exceeded federal sentencing guidelines by six years when he handed down the 20-year sentence in 2022.
Leinenweber is allowing Kelly to serve 19 of the 20-year sentence concurrently with the 30-year sentence he received following a separate conviction in New York federal court. In their decision, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the sentence was appropriate in response to the nature of Kelly’s crimes. The court also rejected Kelly’s argument that the charges were allegedly filed after the statute of limitations had allegedly expired.
“Kelly, interposing a statute-of-limitations defense, thinks he delayed the charges long enough to elude them entirely. The statute says otherwise, so we affirm his conviction,” three judges on an appeal panel argued, “An even-handed jury found Kelly guilty, acquitting him on several charges even after viewing those abhorrent tapes. No statute of limitations saves him, and the resulting sentence was procedurally proper and — especially under these appalling circumstances — substantially fair.”
R. Kelly was convicted by a Chicago federal court in 2023 on charges of allegedly forcing minors into alleged sexual activity and allegedly producing sex tapes involving an alleged minor. He was separately convicted of alleged sex trafficking and alleged racketeering in New York in 2022. He is currently serving his sentence in a prison in Butner, North Carolina.
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