Meek Mill Is Back In Jail Even Though The D.A. & Police Don’t Want Him There (Video)
Today (November 8), Meek Mill turned himself into processing with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. He begins a sentence ordered Monday (November 6) of two-to-four years for probation violation. Meanwhile, Meek Mill’s lawyer is upping the ante in his battle of words against the judge overseeing the case.
Joe Tacopina, the artist’s attorney, yesterday told the New York Times that Judge Genece E. Brinkley has been both “vindictive” and shown “enormous bias” towards the 30-year-old Maybach Music Group star. While speaking with Complex today, the lawyer went further, saying that the judge’s actions were not only “unjust” but stemmed from a personal bias against his client.
Mill’s probation violations related to two arrests the past year connected to a fight at St. Louis airport and “reckless driving” while shooting a video in New York, according to the Times report. Neither went to court: charges were dropped for the first and Mill took a dismissal deal in the second. Tacopina says that during the recent hearing, moreover, both the prosecuting attorney and the arresting officer argued against a custodial sentence.
“It’s clearly unjust, because these are technical violations for two cases” that should have been “dismissed,” he told Complex. Judge Brinkley, he says, has frequently overstepped the mark and acted inappropriately. He cited the time the judge asked to be mentioned by name in a remake of Boyz II Men’s 1994 hit “On Bended Knee” and how she allegedly offered the rapper advice on his musical career. The court has also ordered Mill take etiquette classes.
The New York Times reports that during the Tuesday hearing the judge “scolded” the rapper, saying: “I gave you break after break, and you basically just thumbed your nose at this court.”
This is the second time Mill has been sentenced for probation violations linked to his 2008 conviction for possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and gun possession. In 2014, Mill received a five-month sentence, later telling Billboard he was mainly held in solitary confinement when he was in jail.
Mill’s lawyer argues that the scrutiny the rapper is under is “excessive,” and asks how the continuing probation that has already been extended once can be justified: “Who’s on probation for 10 years? No one…The original situation was [Mill’s] fault, and it goes back to 2008,” he told Complex. “He paid the consequences for that, he made a mistake, and he admitted and acknowledged it…But don’t tell me it’s his fault for having technical violations of probation. Everything he does, he has to report,” he added, “Even if he has to play a concert, he has to get approval for that.”
JAY-Z, meanwhile, has condemned the US justice system during a passionate speech during his Tuesday 4:44 Tour-stop in Dallas and made direct reference to his collaborator: “I gotta say something about a young man named Meek Mill,” he said. “He caught a charge, he was about 19, he’s 30 now, he’s been on probation 11 years. F*cking 11 years,” he said, as reported by Rolling Stone. “Now he got to do two to four years [for a probation violation] because he got arrested being on a bike popping a f*cking wheelie.” But the issue was bigger than the case of Meek Mill, he said, “Everyone has to be just as outraged, you can’t look at it as a Black or white issue, you have to look at it as a human issue.”
Meek’s ex-girlfriend, Nicki Minaj, did not show such sympathy in a since-deleted social media post, as reported by Newsweek. She made a joke of her former romantic partner’s incarceration.
Earlier this year, Meek released his Wins & Losses album.