Yesterday (August 18), Meek Mill’s appeal was rejected.
After denying his lawyer’s request for an emergency hearing last month, Judge Genese Brinkley made the decision to keep Meek in jail so he will be forced to attend anger management counseling for what prosecutors called a parole office “tantrum” over travel restrictions, and a Twitter rant aimed at a parole officer and prosecutor.
“I wanted him to be able to grow and get to the next level (of his career),” Common Pleas Judge Genese Brinkley said. “But I can’t do that with him thumbing his nose at me.”
On July 11, Judge Brinkley sentenced Meek to three to six months in prison for probation violation stemming from a 2009 drug and gun case. Prosecutors accused the rapper of testing positive for a painkiller and used a gun in a music video.
However, Meek blames the new violation on his relationship with his probation officer.
“We never clicked 100 percent,” Mill said Monday, his voice sounding ready to crack.
Defense lawyer Dennis Cogan said Mill had a prescription for the OxyContin after spraining his ankle, and said the video prop was a water pistol.
He also said his client’s tweets, however unwise, were protected by the First Amendment.
“You never said, ‘As a condition of probation, you can’t speak outside the courtroom about the district attorney or the probation officer,'” Cogan argued to the judge.
A prison official, a music promoter and a professor of race relations spoke on Mill’s behalf Monday, and spoke of the difficulty of growing up fatherless — Mill’s father was killed when he was young — and staying out of the crosshairs of the parole system.
According to NBC Philadelphia, Meek Mill may remain behind bars until Oct. 11.
The Dreamchasers CEO’s sophomore album, Dreams Worth More Than Money is slated to drop Sept. 9.
My two cents: All he has to do is follow probation rules and regulations.
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