R. Kelly’s attorneys were back in court on Thursday, arguing for a different sentence.

On Thursday, the attorneys’ arguments were considered by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Kelly wasn’t there himself.

Kelly was found guilty in Chicago on federal child pornography and child enticement charges, but her defense argued that the accusations were brought after the statute of limitations had run out and that Kelly’s punishment was “unduly harsh.”

The R&B singer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a jury in U.S. District Court in Chicago a year ago for luring kids into sexual conduct.

Just a year of that term will be spent after Kelly serves out the remaining 30 years of a separate 30-year sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking crimes in federal court in New York, according to an order from U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.

He will serve his New York sentence and the final 19 years in the Chicago case concurrently.

Kelly, who is currently 57 years old, may be qualified for release from prison when he is somewhat older than 79.

A federal jury in Chicago found Kelly guilty on six charges in September 2022 of molesting three children—Jane, Nia, and Pauline—on camera. The girls were named in court.

Kelly and two colleagues were accused by the same jury of manipulating the results of his 2008 Cook County child pornography trial, but they were found not guilty on seven additional counts, including obstruction of justice.

In the 1990s, rumors that Kelly had mistreated young girls started to spread. A lady who claimed to have been sexually assaulted and harassed by him while she was a teenager sued him in 1997, and he subsequently had criminal charges for child pornography against her and another girl. In the 2008 trial, a Chicago jury found him not guilty, and Kelly reached a settlement.

Over time, more information about the late R&B artist Aaliyah has come to light. Relatives said they were married with matching tracksuits and a fictitious driver’s license stating she was eighteen, not fifteen.

Kelly produced Aaliyah’s tracks before she passed away in a plane accident in 2001.

The widely watched docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” which gave voice to accusers who questioned whether their tales were previously disregarded because they were Black women, contributed to the outrage surrounding Kelly’s sexual misconduct with young women and children.

Jane had accused Kelly of sexually abusing her hundreds of times after he became her godfather when she was just 14 years old in the Chicago trial of 2022. Three recordings, one of which featured Kelly asking Jane to lie down on the floor while he pissed on her, were presented by the prosecution to the jury.

After years of denials, Jane finally admitted that Kelly had mistreated her, saying that he had intimidated her and her family and bought their silence. She told the jury that Kelly had filmed her on additional films that were played in court throughout the 2022 trial, and that she was the person in the video that was the focus of Kelly’s 2008 Cook County child pornography prosecution.

In the 2022 trial, Nia provided testimony stating that she had two sex experiences with Kelly while she was just 15 years old. Pauline stated during the trial that she first met Kelly when she was 14 years old, and the two of them had threesomes before Pauline, at 15 years old, had a solo sexual relationship with Kelly.