Meek Mill's mom asks DA to help her son
PHILADELPHIA -- The mother of jailed rapper Meek Mill is calling on Philadelphia's district attorney to "step in" and help her son. Mill's case has been in the headlines for months as prominent people come to his defense, saying that his sentence for a probation violation was overly severe.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the plea by Kathy Williams came during a brief news conference Tuesday before the start of a criminal justice panel at the University of Pennsylvania.
Williams strongly criticized the judge who sentenced Mill to two to four years in prison last fall for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case. The judge cited a failed drug test, his failure to comply with court-ordered travel restrictions and two unrelated arrests in ordering him locked up. An appeals court in December denied a request to free the 30-year-old musician on bail.
Representatives of Mill previously have asked that the district attorney's office intervene in the case.
A spokesman for District Attorney Larry Krasner declined to comment on the request.
In November, demonstrators took to the streets in Philadelphia to protest his sentence and Jay-Z wrote an op-ed in the New York Times and called the rapper's sentence "just one example of how our criminal justice system entraps and harasses hundreds of thousands of black people every day."