The rapper Tekashi69, described by a Manhattan judge as having repeatedly violated the terms of his probation and of betraying the faith of those who had showed him lenience, was sentenced on Friday to three months in prison.
The rapper, who is also known as 6ix9ine and whose legal name is Daniel Hernandez, was indicted in 2018 in a federal racketeering case that targeted members of a criminal group with which he had been associated.
After pleading guilty to conspiracy and other charges, he testified against members of the group, the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods, and was subsequently sentenced to two years in prison. Since being released in 2020, however, he has flouted rules set by the authorities.
Standing in front of Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of Federal District Court on Friday, Mr. Hernandez said he took responsibility for his latest offenses — possessing cocaine and Ecstasy earlier this year and pummeling a man at a mall in August who had jeered at him because of his Nine Trey testimony.
But the judge, who said in sentencing Mr. Hernandez in 2019 that the rapper seemed to have become “a wiser and much more mature man,” appeared to be running out of patience.
“There is a through line connecting your misconduct,” Judge Engelmayer told Mr. Hernandez. “From time to time your actions suggest that you believe that ordinary rules don’t apply to you.”
Before being sentenced, Mr. Hernandez spoke for half an hour, detailing about a dozen episodes in which he said his notoriety for cooperating with the authorities had prompted people to harass or threaten him and members of his family.
“Unknown individuals left a coffin in front of my house with an animal in it to send me a message,” he said. ‘Three masked gunmen held my mom at gunpoint.”
Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Lance Lazzaro, had asked that his client be sentenced to six months of home detention instead of prison time for the probation violations. In a letter to the judge, Mr. Lazzaro wrote that Mr. Hernandez had possessed minuscule amounts of drugs and said that the assault victim at the mall, in Wellington, Fla., was “the initial aggressor” and had chosen to “excessively taunt and harass Mr. Hernandez.”
Federal prosecutors countered in a court filing that Mr. Hernandez should be imprisoned for three to nine months and then subject to years of supervision after release because he had “violated the trust this court placed in him.”
“He still appears unable to control his temper when slighted by a random stranger,” prosecutors wrote.
Mr. Hernandez discussed the mall encounter on a recent podcast, saying he suffered from trauma and that he feared the man’s gibes would escalate to an attack. “We beat him up in, like, self-defense,” he said. “But the court doesn’t look at it like that.”
Prosecutors wrote that Mr. Hernandez and an associate had followed the man from the mall’s first floor to the second before punching and kicking him. They fled after realizing the man had a gun, prosecutors said.
Mr. Hernandez has cycled through crime, contrition and crime again for a decade.
In 2015, he arranged for a 13-year-old girl to have sex with an adult man and was sentenced to probation. But Mr. Hernandez violated the terms of his probation in that case, driving with a suspended license and grabbing a 16-year-old fan by the neck, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Prosecutors asked in 2018 that he be sentenced to prison, but a state court judge sentenced him to community service and four years of probation instead.
By then, Mr. Hernandez had rocketed to prominence as a rapper while cultivating an association with the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. The connection gave him an aura of street credibility, but some gang members threatened his life.
In late 2019, after testifying at the gang trial, Mr. Hernandez wept in court and apologized profusely for his misdeeds, which prosecutors said included involvement in one shooting at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, another at the W Hotel in Times Square and a brawl at Los Angeles International Airport.
Just before sentencing Mr. Hernandez in 2019, Judge Engelmayer said the rapper had earned a prison term “far, far lower” than what he could have received if not for his “extraordinary assistance” as a witness.
The judge acknowledged that assistance again last year, saying “you continue to deserve respect and credit,” but he also sent Mr. Hernandez to prison for 45 days for violating the terms of his release by using methamphetamine, failing to comply with drug-testing requirements and flying to Las Vegas without permission.
Mr. Hernandez again expressed regret, saying in court that “I feel disappointed in myself.” And again, his transgressions continued, including the dust-up at the mall.
In a letter to Judge Engelmayer, prosecutors said Mr. Hernandez should receive anger management counseling to help him deal peacefully with any future provocations.
“While it is unfortunate that anyone would verbally provoke Hernandez for cooperating with the government,” the prosecutors wrote, similar taunting would “likely recur for the foreseeable future.”
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