A judge in Houston has piled onto Tekashi 69‘s small mountain of legal troubles with an arrest warrant for missing court — even though he’s already locked up in New York on racketeering charges and was denied bail. TMZ reports that Tekashi’s bond was revoked from an arrest earlier this year when he allegedly choked out a teen with whom he had some sort of scuffle at a local mall.
Tekashi was issued a court date for today to appear before the judge and plead his case, but couldn’t make the appearance because, well, he’s already in jail on federal charges. The Houston judge was forced to automatically issue a bench warrant for the rapper’s arrest, which is likely to expire before he ever gets out of prison if he winds up convicted on some of those current federal charges. If he does dodge the proverbial bullet, he’ll have to clear up whatever legal issues he has in Texas, or wind up right back in jail there.
The worst part is, the alleged victim, identified as 16-year-old Santiago Albarran, told the court he didn’t want Tekashi prosecuted. Tekashi’s attorney in the case rejected a plea deal, believing that the case should be thrown out on those grounds. It’s a weird quirk of the criminal justice system that warrants, charges, and convictions can stack up like this, and one of the many reasons that prison reform is on so many minds lately, from Meek Mill’s to Kanye West’s. Whether or not Tekashi deserves to be given this runaround, there has to be some clerk in Houston rolling their eyes at having one more piece of unnecessary paperwork to file.
