The judge who has overseen Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill’s case for more than a decade will remain on the case following a failed bid by Mill’s legal team Wednesday to have her booted.
Mill, whose legal name is Robert Williams, looked visibly frustrated as the effort to move his case to a different judge was shot down. He did not speak in court, and he did not address reporters after the hearing.
In April, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court intervened in Mill’s case and released the 31-year-old from prison, but the state’s top judges would not reassign the case to another trial judge, as Mill’s lawyers had sought.
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Common Pleas Judge Genece Brinkley has presided over Mill’s case since his 2007 arrest on drug and gun charges. In recent months, the rapper and the longtime judge have publicly feuded to the point where Brinkley has hired a lawyer to defend her against accusations of abusing her power in Mill’s case — as well as more far-flung claims about her dealings as a landlord and her involvement in more than a dozen civil lawsuits.
On Wednesday in court, Mill lawyer Brian McMonagle reminded President Judge Leon Tucker that, despite the Philadelphia district attorney’s office admitting that prosecutors no longer trust the credibility of the officer who originally arrested Mill and support a new trial, Brinkley will not grant one.
“She is incapable of presiding over this case, ” McMonagle said of Brinkley. “You have the ability as the president judge to reassign the case.”
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Yet Tucker balked at that suggestion, saying only the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has the ability to move a case to a different judge.
“I can’t pull rank over any judge because they were elected just as I was, ” Tucker said. “I wear the same robe that she does.”
In the April ruling from the high court ordering that Mill be released but also keeping Brinkley on the case, the justices wrote, “the presiding jurist may opt to remove herself, ” citing a rule that would allow her to step down when such a move is “in the interest of justice.”
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Meek Mill’s lawyers Brian McMonagle (left) and Joe Tacopina talk with reporters after a hearing where they requested a new judge to oversee Mill’s case. The request was denied. (Emma Lee/)
Brinkley sentenced Mill to 2 to 4 years behind bars followed multiple violations of probation triggered by, among other issues, failing to report his travel schedule to the court and his arrest after a scuffle in the St. Louis airport.
Proponents of criminal justice reform have held up Mill’s legal saga as a way of igniting a larger conversation about the 44, 000 Philadelphia residents now on probation. More than one-third of those locked up in local jails were sent there over probation and parole violations.
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Over the course of Mill’s probation, which has extended for his entire adult life, the rapper’s advocates have said that Brinkley has at times abused her role as a judge. Once, she visited a soup kitchen to verify that Mill was feeding homeless people there. And, in a private meeting, the judge allegedly asked Mill to record a version of Boyz II Men’s “On Bended Knee” and supposedly asked that she receive a shoutout on the song, requests Mill says he declined.
The latest reason why Brinkley should remove herself from the case, according to Mill’s lawyers, is a civil lawsuit the judge filed last month over a 2016 automobile accident she was involved in while on vacation on the Caribbean island of St. Martin.
“She has in the past and may in the future continue to suffer from agonizing aches, pains and mental anguish. She has in the past been and may in the future be disabled from performing her usual duties, occupations and avocations, ” Brinkley wrote in the suit.
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“Her occupation is a judge, as far as I know, ” Tacopina said. “And she’s called into question her ability to sit in this case, or any case quite frankly.”
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From the view of Mill’s legal team, not only is Brinkley not willing to step down from the case or grant Mill a new trial, the judge is also not referring his appeal to another judge, which is typically the custom.
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Prosecutors wanted the sentence to reflect the “gravity’’ of Kevin Seefried’s crimes. The defendant’s lawyer says he knows “history may view him as a racist.”
Assistant District Attorney Anthony Voci was sent to the insurance fraud unit after the September 2020 incident that sent a young woman to jail.The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said in court Monday that because of questions about the credibility of his arresting officer, the rapper's decade-old conviction on gun and drug charges should be vacated and he should be granted a new trial.
Rapper Meek Mill, right, arrives at the Criminal Justice Center with his lawyer Brian McMonagle, left, in Philadelphia, PA on November 6, 2017. DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff PhotographerRead moreDavid Maialetti
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The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said Monday that due to questions about the credibility of his arresting officer, the imprisoned rapper's decade-old conviction on gun and drug charges should be vacated and he should be granted a new trial.
The recommendation, disclosed by Assistant District Attorney Liam Riley during a status hearing in Mill's case, marked the first time prosecutors have publicly said they agree with the claim by Mill's lawyers that his original arrest in 2007 might have been improper. It could also signal they would not press forward with a new trial — possibly freeing Mill from the legal trouble he's had for a decade.
Common Pleas Court Judge Genece E. Brinkley, who in November sentenced Mill to two to four years in prison for violating his probation, ultimately would have to agree to vacate the conviction — and she did not do so Monday. Instead, she scheduled another hearing for June, and refused to hear arguments from Mill's attorneys that he should be let out on bail.
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Brian McMonagle, one of Mill's lawyers, said his team planned to filed motions with higher courts seeking to secure Mill's release immediately. McMonagle said his team was elated by the decision of the District Attorney's Office, and said it would be reprehensible if Brinkley did not sign off on it.
Mill, 30, did not attend Monday's hearing, but upwards of 100 people rallied in support of him outside the Criminal Justice Center.
He has been incarcerated since November, when Brinkley sentenced him to prison and told him: I gave you break after break, and you basically just thumbed your nose at this court. Neither city prosecutors nor his probation officer at the time had recommended sending him back to prison.
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Her sentence sparked immediate outrage, with athletes, musicians, and other celebrities saying the outcome demonstrated the flaws of the criminal justice system. Protesters rallied outside the Criminal Justice Center to call for Mill's release, and political leaders including Mayor Kenney and Gov. Wolf have since expressed varying degrees of support for the Philadelphia-born Mill, whose legal name is Robert Rihmeek Williams.
Perhaps his most concrete reason for optimism came when District Attorney Larry Krasner — who took office after Mill was sentenced — said his office had questions about whether Mill's original conviction should stand. That position, made public in a motion Krasner's office filed last month, was taken after Mill's legal team produced evidence accusing his arresting officer, Reginald V. Graham, of lying to secure his conviction.
Krasner's office also disclosed in February that prosecutors had placed Graham on a list of police officers with credibility questions — something Mill's attorneys said they had not previously been told.
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Riley, the assistant district attorney, said in court Monday that prosecutors reviewing Graham's history have since identified 56 cases with similar credibility issues, and that the office believes his questionable conduct dates back to 2005, well before he arrested Mill.
Still, the fate of the entertainer's case — at least for the moment — lies in the hands of Brinkley, the judge whom Mill's supporters have spent months petitioning to have removed from the case and accused of ethical improprieties.
Late last month, the judge defended herself in an opinion filed in court, writing that she had committed no error and that her sentence of Mill was not manifestly excessive. She also struck back at his legal team, accusing the lawyers of making evidence-free allegations about her behavior in overseeing his case.
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While lawyers for Mill and the District Attorney's Office wrangled with Brinkley in a ninth-floor courtroom Monday, Free Meek Mill protesters outside the building raged against what they called her tyranny and called on the governor to pardon the rapper.
The peaceful gathering — which resulted in police closing off Filbert Street in front of the courthouse — included the rapper's mother and son, fans, criminal justice reform advocates, 25 Boston teens in town for a service project, and a smattering of politicians.
The flaws of our criminal justice system are many, State Sen. Sharif Street said from a platform. Meek Mill is one of thousands of citizens, many from my district in North
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