Judge ignores recommendation, sends Meek Mill to prison
PHILADELPHIA — Rapper Meek Mill was sentenced to two to four years in prison on probation violations Monday by a Philadelphia judge who said the musician had wasted several chances to clean up his act following a 2009 gun and drug case.
The sentence rounded out a roughly decade-long back and forth between the 30-year-old musician and Common Pleas Judge Genece Brinkley that has dogged Mill’s career as he had been jailed and called to court multiple times on various infractions.
“I’ve been trying to help you since 2009,” Brinkley said, citing a failed drug test, failure to comply with a court order restricting his travel and two other unrelated arrests. “You basically thumbed your nose at me.”
The handing down of the sentence came after a prosecutor recommended that Mill not be imprisoned for the violations, saying that he has been clean since January and that he has grown as a person since his original crime. Brinkley said the prosecutor was too new to the case to understand how Mill just “does what he wants.”