Kenneth Petty, Nicki Minaj’s husband, pleaded guilty on September 9, 2021, to a federal charge of failing to register as a sex offender in California. The plea was not his sentence: in July 2022, a judge ordered one year of home confinement, three years of probation and a $55,000 fine, with no prison time reported for this case.
What Kenneth Petty pleaded guilty to
Petty entered the guilty plea during a virtual hearing on September 9, 2021, according to contemporaneous reports by the Los Angeles Times and Pitchfork. The charge was federal, although the registration failure at issue followed his move to California. He had initially pleaded not guilty; Pitchfork reported in August 2021 that he had agreed to a plea deal and that sentencing remained pending.
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Why he was required to register
The Los Angeles Times reported that Petty’s registration obligation stemmed from a 1995 New York attempted-rape conviction. The conviction required him to register as a sex offender wherever he lived, and the federal case concerned his failure to register after moving to California. The Times’ coverage of the underlying conviction describes that obligation.
What sentence the court imposed
On July 6, 2022, U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald sentenced Petty to one year of home confinement, three years of probation and a $55,000 fine, the Los Angeles Times reported. The newspaper attributed those details to U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson Ciaran McEvoy. The reported sentence did not include prison time for this charge. Read the report on the sentencing.
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Timeline of the case
- 1995: Petty was convicted of attempted rape in New York; the Los Angeles Times reported that the conviction carried a registration requirement wherever he lived.
- August 2021: Pitchfork reported that Petty had agreed to a plea deal.
- September 9, 2021: He pleaded guilty at a virtual hearing to the federal failure-to-register charge.
- July 6, 2022: Judge Fitzgerald imposed home confinement, probation and a fine.
What is known about his status now
The cited reports establish the plea and the sentence announced in 2022, but they do not establish Petty’s current probation status or whether he is currently complying with registration requirements. Those details should not be inferred from the earlier case reports.
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