R. Kelly: Supreme Court rejects appeal of federal sex crimes conviction

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear an appeal from R. Kelly, who is currently serving a prison sentence for federal sex crime convictions.

Robert Sylvester Kelly was already serving a 30-year sentence for sex trafficking, stemming from a 2021 New York case, when he was convicted of child pornography in Chicago for which he was sentenced to 20 years in 2023.

Kelly told the Supreme Court that he was wrongly retroactively prosecuted under a federal law that passed in 2003 and made the statute of limitations indefinite for sex crimes with minors. Federal prosecutors declined to respond to his appeal.

The Supreme Court denied the appeal on Monday without explaining its reasoning and there were no noted dissents.

CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister contributed to this report.