20KMeek Mill‘s two-to-four-year prison sentence for violating probation continues to be a hot topic.
Legal expert and Make It Rain! author Areva Martin tells ABC Radio that though she wasn’t involved in the case, she became “concerned, as a lawyer, about what was happening to [him] and whether the punishment that he was getting was fair.”
Martin believes that compared to the sentence he received, the crime Meek committed “seemed to be fairly insignificant.”
As previously reported, last year, Meek was sentenced to two to four years for violating his probation on a 2008 drug and weapons charge.
Areva tells ABC Radio, “I was on CNN one morning having a debate with someone about this and they were pretty hardlined about it: ‘If you violate your probation, you should go to jail.’ [And] I’m the first person to say, as a lawyer, if someone commits an offense, you have to face the consequences of your action.”
“But I also believe in parity and fairness and that we know all too often in the criminal justice system, particularly when we’re dealing with African-American males, the system isn’t fair,” she adds.
“And the system is stacked against them.”
Martin continues, “This isn’t just Areva talking. There’s statistics, there’s studies, scientific evidence that supports this, that African-American men face a different criminal justice system than non-African-American men.”
“And this was a case that raised a lot of concerns.”
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