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A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld R. Kelly’s conviction for sex trafficking and racketeering, rejecting his legal team’s arguments and affirming the extensive evidence that led to his decades-long prison sentence, Reuters reported today.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled against Kelly’s appeal, maintaining the decision that the former R&B superstar ran a criminal enterprise that recruited women and underage girls for sex and subjected them to abuse.
In the court’s opinion, Circuit Judge Denny Chin wrote that prosecutors had provided “extensive evidence showing how Kelly ensnared young girls and women into his orbit, endeavored to control their lives, and secured their compliance with his personal and sexual demands through verbal and physical abuse, threats of blackmail, and humiliation.” Chin further noted that jurors were presented with substantial proof that Kelly, 58, intended to make his victims believe they would face harm if they did not comply with his demands.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, responded to the ruling by stating that her client may appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. She argued that the decision “gives the government limitless discretion to apply the RICO statute to situations absurdly remote from the statute’s intent.” Bonjean contended that RICO, originally designed to target organized crime, was misapplied to Kelly’s case. The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment on the ruling.
Kelly is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence following his September 2021 conviction in Brooklyn federal court. He was found guilty of one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting individuals across state lines for prostitution. His trial, one of the most high-profile prosecutions of the #MeToo era, followed two decades of accusations, which Kelly had consistently denied.
Testimony Revealed Systematic Abuse
Throughout Kelly’s trial, jurors heard from 45 government witnesses, including multiple victims who testified about the abusive conditions he imposed. Prosecutors described how Kelly’s entourage helped enforce strict rules, requiring victims to refer to him as “Daddy,” seek permission for basic activities like eating and using the restroom, and write “apology letters” absolving him of wrongdoing.
Among Kelly’s appeal arguments was the claim that prosecutors had not sufficiently proven he knowingly exposed victims to herpes without informing them of his diagnosis. He also contended that four jurors should have been disqualified for allegedly knowing too much about the case before the trial, making them biased against him. The appeals court dismissed these claims.
Multiple Convictions and Sentences
The Brooklyn case is separate from Kelly’s 2022 conviction in Chicago, where a jury found him guilty of child sex crimes. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for that conviction, though the judge ruled that 19 of those years would run concurrently with his existing 30-year sentence. In October 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Kelly’s appeal of his Chicago conviction.
Currently, Kelly is serving his sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, a medium-security facility that previously housed Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff. Based on his current sentencing, Kelly will not be eligible for release until December 2045, when he will be 78 years old.
