By Tai Saint Louis
U.S. District Judge Charles A. Pannell Jr. has ruled that T.I. must report to federal authorities in Arkansas on Tuesday (May 25) to begin his one year prison sentence as scheduled.
Judge Pannell handed down his decision Friday afternoon (May 22), just one day after attorney’s for the rapper requested a two-week delay.
In March, T.I., born Clifford Harris, was sentenced to serve 366 days in prison for illegal firearms possession and being a convicted felon with a firearm.
Two months later, the rapper was assigned to serve his time at the low security facility of the Forrest City Correctional Institute, less than an hour outside of Memphis, Tennessee.
However, T.I.’s attorneys appealed the Atlanta entertainer’s placement, which was based on a prior offense that was designated to be a serious violent felony.
They maintained in their motion to appeal that the offense in question, a 2003 assault case for which T.I. received 75 hours of community service, “amounted to little more than a ‘scuffle’ at the mall.
“There is nothing more we can do pre-reporting,” T.I.’s lawyer Donald F. Samuel stated “We think he was scored the wrong way."
The petition filed on T.I.’s behalf on Thursday (May 21) requested two weeks to allow the rapper to request that the Bureau of Prisons place him in a minimum security prison camp instead of Forrest City.
Despite Judge Pannell’s decision, Samuel says he plans to continue to ask that his client be re-classified even after T.I. becomes one of the 1500 plus inmates at the Forrest City facility.