A federal court judge has allowed Tekashi 6ix9ine to leave prison four months early after agreeing that he was at increased risk of suffering adverse consequences from COVID-19 because he has chronic asthma.
The 23-year-old Brooklyn-born rapper and social media provocateur reportedly is back home, though it’s not exactly clear where home now is, TMZ reported.
Also, don’t expect to see the once-flamboyant Tekashi out and about anytime soon. Judge Paul Engelmayer said that Tekashi, whose legal name is Daniel Hernandez, must be on home confinement, both as a condition of his supervised release and because everyone else in the New York metropolitan area must shelter in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. It’s not clear whether Tekashi’s release will allow him to start firing up his Instagram account again.
In issuing his ruling, Engelmayer said the rapper was entitled to “a compassionate release” because the COVID-19 pandemic “is extraordinary and unprecedented in modern times in this nation.” The virus poses an especially heightened risk to inmates with respiratory ailments such as asthma, Engelmayer added.
“The Centers for Disease Control warns that persons with asthma are at high risk of serious illness if they contract the disease,” the judge’s order stated. “Further, the crowded nature of municipal jails such as the facility in which Mr. Hernandez is housed present an outsize risk” from COVID-19 contagion.
The judge also ruled that Tekashi no longer represents a “meaningful danger to the community” because he cooperated with federal authorities investigating the violent Nine Trey Gangsta Blood street gang that terrorized the New York area for years.
Tekashi was briefly a member of the gang, saying he joined in October 2017 to enhance his street credibility as a rapper. He burst onto the rap scene with his YouTube hit “GUMMO,” with the video showing him, with his rainbow-colored hair and heavily tattooed face, surrounded by guns, drugs, stacks of cash and a group of reported Bloods gang members wearing red.
Tekashi pleaded guilty to participating in a series of crimes with the gang, including robbery, assault and drug dealing. At the trial of two Nine Trey members in September, Tekashi risked retaliation for being “a snitch” after he offered up detailed information about the inner workings of the gang.
Tekashi originally was arrested in November 2018 and has been incarcerated ever since. Engelmayer noted that the rapper had thus served a majority of his 24-month sentence and would have been released in early August, after receiving credit for time served.
While on supervised release, Tekashi will have to be on GPS monitoring and won’t be able to leave his home unless he needs to seek necessary medical treatment or visit his attorney. Prosecutors had no objection to Tekashi’s compassionate release, TMZ added.
