Supreme Court Upholds R. Kelly's 20-Year Sentence, Rejects Appeal on Child Abuse Conviction

U.S. Supreme Court denies R. Kelly's appeal, affirming his 20-year prison sentence for child sexual abuse.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear R. Kelly's appeal of his 2022 federal conviction on charges related to child pornography and luring underage girls for sex. In a decision announced on Monday, the justices turned away the former R&B singer’s challenge to the conviction upheld by a federal jury in Chicago. Kelly, 57, had argued in his appeal that prosecutors filed the charges after the statute of limitations had expired.

During his Chicago trial, several women testified that Kelly sexually abused them when they were minors, and the jury viewed video evidence of Kelly molesting his goddaughter, who testified that the abuse began in the 1990s. Kelly was convicted on three child pornography counts and three counts of enticing minors for sex, although he was acquitted of seven additional charges, including obstruction of justice and conspiracy to receive child pornography. He received a 20-year sentence for these convictions.

Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was also convicted in a separate 2021 trial in New York on racketeering charges and violations of the Mann Act. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with that sentence largely overlapping with his Chicago sentence. Kelly is currently incarcerated at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, and is eligible for release in 2045, according to Bureau of Prisons records.