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Kenneth Petty, the husband of rap star Nicki Minaj, is embroiled in a serious legal fight as prosecutors want him to serve time in a prison facility instead of home confinement as his lawyers asked for.
According to reports, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has raised serious objections to a proposed sentence for Petty, who has pleaded guilty to not registering as a sex offender in the state of California. Lawyers for Petty are advocating that he serve his time on house arrest, followed by heavy supervision during his release. Federal prosecutors are vehemently against that idea, citing that the mansion he shares with the “Super Bass” rapper is in a “gated, affluent community” with amenities such as a pool and a music studio that don’t fit their ideas of punishment. Legal documents show that they state it is the same sort of conditions that led Petty to be lax after diligently complying with his registry paperwork for 20 years: “Defendant began dating his wife, quit his job, moved to Los Angeles, and adopted an affluent lifestyle.”
The prosecutors are asking that Petty serve fifteen months in prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release. In addition, they are requesting that he pay a $55K fine of restitution to the state as part of the sentence. The date for the judge overseeing the case to hand down the sentence is slated for July 6th.
Petty was in violation of his previous conviction for attempted rape back in 1995 in New York, which not only placed him on the list of sex offenders in that state but also stipulated that if he were to move somewhere else, he had to register as an offender there. He failed to do so after moving to Los Angeles with Minaj in 2019. Petty was arrested in March and pleaded not guilty at the time after being released on $100,000 bail. He would later change his plea in a bid to get a lessened jail sentence.