Justice is dung.
A Manhattan federal court judge handed a former Tekashi 6ix 9ine guard a low-ball sentence for gun possession on Wednesday, arguing that a colostomy bag the man must wear for the rest of his life as the result of being shot in the stomach will teach him to stay away from firearms.
“You have paid dearly for physically for running with a violent crowd,” Judge Paul Engelmayer told the rapper’s onetime bodyguard, Faheem Walter. “You as well as anyone else understand the risks associated with gun violence.”
Walter, 29, pleaded guilty in April to counts of assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering and carrying a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence while working for the rainbow-maned rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez.
Prosecutors said he took part in multiple violent gang-related encounters, including an April 2018 shooting at the Barclays Center before he was shot in the stomach during a dispute with one of Hernandez’s music managers outside a Lenox Hill restaurant in October 2018.
Officials sought a sentence of 68-74 months, but the judge handed down 62 — just over the mandatory minimum of 60 months.
Defense attorney Edward Sapone told Engelmayer his client had suffered substantially since the bullet ripped through his intestine, enduring a protracted recovery and having to change his own colostomy bag while behind bars.
“He was at the MDC during the blackout,” Sapone said, referencing the power failure that plunged hundreds of inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center into freezing blackness in February 2019. “He sat in the dark for days and days and days, and couldn’t change his colostomy bag…he sat there in the dark and the cold with feces all over his body.”
Sapone assured the judge this “is not a pity party” but said his client had “suffered enough” since falling in with the “GUMMO” crooner and his Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods associates.
“He wishes he never met Mr. Hernandez,” the lawyer added.
Prosecutors Wednesday said it was unlikely Walter would be capable of similar crimes in the future, and the judge agreed, saying: “the image of an enforcer with a colostomy bag is not a familiar one.”
Walter also spoke, saying he “would like to apologize to any victims in this case, whether it my my wrongdoing or my co-defendants’ wrongdoing.”
While Engelmayer said Walter was party to violent robberies, he felt his “near-death experience” would serve as a lifelong reminder to follow the law, and “may stay your hand in the future should you contemplate violence.”
Brooklyn-born Tekashi 6ix 9ine pleaded guilty to racketeering, drug and gun charges in January and has been cooperating with investigators.