Meek Mill’s decade-long legal battle is finally over. CBS Philadelphia reports that Meek Mill reached a deal with prosecutors to drop the charges against him in a 2007 case. The rapper pled guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge and gotten all other charges against him dropped. A judge accepted Mill’s guilty plea on Tuesday morning.
“I know this has been a long road for you and hopefully this will be the end of it,” Judge Leon Tucker told the rapper.
At a rally outside, Mill briefly spoke to supporters outside the Criminal Justice Center following his hearing.
“Free Meek helped me get to this position,” Mill said. “Meek freed, I’m not on probation no more. Thank you, I appreciate that a lot. And I just wanted to come up here myself and thank all the supporters because I know y’all probably got family members in jail or people going through the same thing as me and I will continue to do what I do with the reform movement and help the people who helped me.”
In a statement sent to Pitchfork, Meek Mill’s representatives sent the following from the rapper:
I’m extremely grateful that my long legal battle is finally behind me and I appreciate that it has sparked a much-needed discussion about probation reform and the inequalities that exist within our two Americas. I have always told the truth—that as a teenager, who saw many around me die from senseless gun violence, I carried a gun for protection. I take responsibility for that and—in conjunction with my work on the REFORM Alliance—I’ll continue to use my platform to make communities safer and reform our criminal justice system. I want to express my gratitude to all of my supporters, especially JAY-Z, Desiree Perez, Michael Rubin, my legal team, and everyone else who stood by me throughout the years. It’s important that we now channel our energy into helping the millions that are unjustly trapped in our criminal justice system.
Last month, Meek Mill‘s 2008 conviction in a drug and gun case was overturned by the Pennsylvania appeals court. Since the conviction, Meek was on probation for over a decade and it has landed the rapper in prison multiple times over the last decade.
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