6ix9ine will start the new year in jail.
The rapper, dressed in a red hoodie and white Crocs and with his hair in multicolored braids, appeared in federal court in Manhattan on Friday (Dec. 5) to be sentenced for a series of violations of the terms of his supervised release: possession of cocaine and MDMA and battery of someone inside a Florida shopping mall.
Paul Engelmayer, the same judge who presided over the 2019 racketeering trial where 6ix9ine (real name Daniel Hernandez) testified as a cooperating witness, sentenced the controversial artist to three months in prison and an additional year of supervised release. 6ix9ine will begin serving his term on Jan. 6, 2026.
The most dramatic moment of the hearing came from 6ix9ine himself. He spoke to Judge Engelmayer directly in an emotional address. Hernandez, in an attempt to present an idea of what it was like to “walk a mile in [my] shoes,” recounted one by one a dozen or so incidents, backed by papers he held up with photos and printouts, where he’d faced harassment or violence due to his cooperation.
The list began shortly after his release from prison in 2020. The incidents included getting kicked out of restaurants, being threatened with fistfights, having a drink thrown in his face at a 2021 UFC fight, getting punched in the back of the head following a performance, and more.
Among the incidents in the list was one in where he was thrown out of a Foot Locker (he was told there were “no shoes for a rat,” he remembered) and threatened with violence.
Many of the incidents, like a coffin being left in front of his house and being assaulted in the locker room of a Florida gym, had been public knowledge. Others had not been previously reported.
“Each scenario, I walked away,” 6ix9ine told Judge Engelmayer, his voice breaking. “How many times do I have to walk away for you guys to see it’s a pattern?”
The rapper also said that it was difficult for him to work because “music execs” had “put a blackball where I’m not able to perform.”
“I need you to see the facts, and please have mercy,” he said to the judge. “I take full responsibility. But mental health is a real thing.”
Engelmayer actually referred back to the earliest of those incidents, which happened in August, 2020, when pronouncing his sentence. The judge recalled that he’d let Hernandez out of prison early because the rapper had respiratory issues that made him particularly susceptible to Covid. So the judge viewed it as a breach of trust to hear that not long after, before there was a vaccine for the virus, the rapper had been going to meals in restaurants.
“You had no business going to all those meals in August, 2020,” Engelmayer said, saying that the rapper should have been in isolation in order to avoid getting sick. “That’s called hypocrisy.”
The judge had to sort through competing version of 6ix9ine’s behavior in pronouncing his sentence. During the hearing, Engelmayer heard from two people within the Probation Department who had been involved with the rapper’s case. One of them portrayed 6ix9ine as making great strides, while the other harped on the rapper’s continuing series of violations, and viewed his case as something close to hopeless.
Engelmayer referred to these two characterizations as “two steps forward, one step back” versus a “dumpster fire.”
6ix9ine asked to serve his sentence in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, the same facility where he served a 45-day sentence late last year for a previous set of supervised release violations.
The rapper’s attorney, Lance Lazzaro, spoke to Complex afterwards.
“It was a fair sentence,” he said.
