R. Kelly’s legal team has officially filed an appeal in his federal sexual crimes case in New York as the R&B singer’s lawyers believe he was wrongfully convicted.
According to TMZ, Kellz believes his verdict should be overturned due to a potentially biased jury who didn’t understand that he was misled by about the age of the minors he had relations with. The appeal was filed by his attorney Jennifer Bonjean on Tuesday and they are seeking to appeal the court’s conviction or sit in front of a judge for a new trial.
As we previously reported, R. Kelly was convicted last year on six counts of sexual exploitation and enticement of a minor in a case stemming from the complaints of women who said he lured them into sex acts while they were underage and accusations that he conspired to intimidate and bribe witnesses.
The decision by a federal jury came on the second day of deliberations and came one year after Kelly was convicted in New York on charges of federal racketeering and sex trafficking. He is serving a 30-year prison sentence in that case.
Kelly had faced 13 counts, including charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, receipt of child pornography, enticement of a minor to engage in unlawful sexual conduct, conspiring to obstruct justice and conspiring to receive child pornography. He was acquitted on seven counts, including all of the charges related to conspiracy.
Kelly had been accused by prosecutors of engaging in sex acts with five minors and recording some of the abuse on multiple videos.
During the trial, spread across five weeks, jurors heard from several of Kelly’s alleged victims who all testified that they were underage when Kelly began sexually abusing them.
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Prosecutors centered their case around a star witness, identified by the pseudonym Jane in court, who identified herself as the person in a 26-minute videotape sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun-Timesin 2002 that allegedly showed Kelly performing sex acts with an underage girl. NBC News has not viewed the videotape. Parts of it and several other recordings, purportedly depicting Kelly engaged in sex acts with minors, were played during the trial as the prosecution presented its case.