The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Lawyers for Meek Mill trying to get him released from prison
PHILADELPHIA » Lawyers for Meek Mill are asking for him to be released from prison and for his probation to be terminated.
Judge Genece Brinkley sentenced the rapper last week to two to four years in prison for violating probation in a nearly decade-old gun and drug case.
She cited a failed drug test, failure to comply with a court order restricting his travel and two other unrelated arrests in ordering the prison time, saying, “You basically thumbed your nose at me.”
In an appeal filed Wednesday, his lawyers make a number of arguments, including that Meek Mill’s probation officer and a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office didn’t recommend a prison sentence as punishment.
They say the sentence was too harsh for his relatively minor offenses.
On Tuesday, they asked Brinkley to step down from the case in a motion that alleges Brinkley has gone beyond the bounds of a proper judicial role and has made the case inappropriately personal.
Among the examples cited was the judge suggesting Mill record a version of the Boyz II Men song “On Bended Knee” and specifically mention the judge in it. The lawyer says after Mill declined, the judge replied: “Suit yourself.”
Due to his celebrity, Mill has been put in protective custody at the state prison. The only housing units the prison has for such custody is in solitary confinement, where he spends 23 hours a day, seven days a week, according to the motion.
Formally incorporated in 1971, DEC began with the opening of the Pottstown Training Center with only 15 clients in its initial year. The following year, DEC opened the doors of its first community-based facility, the Norristown Training Center, a site that was eventually replaced with a larger facility that continues to house both its recently renovated Training Center and the centralized Administrative Headquarters. Today, DEC operates a total of five community-based Training Centers: Pottstown, Norristown, Willow Grove, North Penn and Center Point.
“Today, the clients may reside in homes that are owned by DEC, they may reside with their mother and father, or they may reside in an apartment of their own, and we will give them training on everyday living skills,” Shapson said. “In the old days they would sit around doing nothing, being unproductive, or worse, end up in a place like Pennhurst State where they had to fend for themselves against people with schizophrenia and serious mental issues. Today they get a quality life, they get to make friends with each other, hold jobs, contribute to the community as taxpayers and volunteers, and that’s the idea — to give them a life where they can be like everybody else.”