US Supreme Court rebuffs singer R. Kelly's challenge to sex abuse conviction

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear imprisoned former R&B superstar R. Kelly's appeal of his 2022 federal conviction on charges involving child pornography and luring underage girls to have sex with him, one of two cases in which he was found guilty of sex crimes.

The justices turned away Kelly's challenge to a lower court's decision upholding his conviction by a federal jury in Chicago.

Kelly, now 57, claimed in his Supreme Court filing that prosecutors filed the charges against him in the case after the statute of limitations had expired.

During that trial, several women testified that Kelly sexually abused them when they were minors. The jury also was shown video of Kelly molesting his goddaughter, who testified that the abuse began in the 1990s when she was a teenager.

Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the case. He was found guilty of three child pornography counts and three counts of enticing minors for sex, but acquitted of seven other charges that included obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to receive child pornography.

Kelly in 2021 was convicted in another trial by a jury in New York City's borough of Brooklyn on all nine charges he faced, including racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which forbids transporting people across state lines for prostitution. He was given a 30-year prison sentence in that case, set to largely overlap with his sentence in the Chicago case.

Kelly is incarcerated at a Butner, North Carolina federal prison and is eligible for release in 2045, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records.

Kelly filed his Supreme Court appeal after the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April rejected his challenge.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)