Kenneth Petty, Nicki Minaj’s husband since 2019, has been sentenced to a year of house arrest for failling to register as a sex offender in California, according to CBS Los Angeles. In addition, he must pay pay a $55,000 fine and complete three years of probation. Petty pled guilty to failing to register as a sex offender in September last year after being arrested in November of 2019 during a traffic stop.
Petty was convicted of first-degree attempted rape in New York in 1995. Despite completing his four-year sentence and registering as a sex offender in New York, he did not update his address with authorities upon the couple’s move to Los Angeles in 2019. He originally pled not guilty to failing to register, but considering a conviction could cost him up to ten years in prison with a lifetime of supervised release, he apparently changed his mind, taking the plea for a lesser sentence.
The alleged victim from his original conviction, Jennifer Hough, sued both Petty and Minaj in 2021, claiming that they or their representatives have been harassing her to recant her initial testimony. Nicki and her lawyer have called the lawsuit an attempt to shake her down for money and called for Hough’s lawyer to be “severely punished” for making certain claims in his filings saying Nicki was part of a New York street gang.
