Rapper Boosie Badazz was sentenced on Friday (Jan. 9) to no prison time following his guilty plea on gun possession charges.
At a court hearing in San Diego federal court, Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo sentenced Boosie (Torence Hatch) to time served, plus three years of supervised release and a $50,000 fine, for illegally owning a gun after earlier felony convictions.
The light sentence comes after Boosie struck a plea deal with prosecutors in August after he said he was “tired of fighting.” But even under the terms of that deal, the feds had recommended a stiffer sentence of two years in prison.
“I’m blessed not to be in prison right now,” Boosie said in a video statement released after the hearing, adding that he planned to accelerate touring and artistic projects that had been stalled during the case. “I’m just grateful right now.”
Boosie was first charged in June 2023 with being a felon in possession of a firearm — meaning he violated a federal law that prohibits people with felony convictions from owning guns. The rapper had previously been convicted of drug charges in 2011, along with numerous other earlier convictions.
The details of Boosie’s arrest were unusual. Local authorities spotted a handgun tucked in his waistband while monitoring the Instagram feed of a “known gang member” in San Diego — then used a helicopter to track him in real-time in an allegedly gang-associated neighborhood. After a traffic stop, he was found with a matching Glock pistol in the vehicle.
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Following years of procedural ups-and-downs, the case against Boosie was scheduled for a trial last summer. But in August, the rapper said he would accept a plea deal to “get on with my life.” The feds later revealed that they had promised a two-year sentence in return for the guilty plea. Last week, they formalized that request to the judge, citing the rapper’s “difficult upbringing which likely contributed to his current predicament.”
In the lead-up to sentencing, Boosie’s lawyers asked for less: No prison time at all and just two years of probation. The possession of the gun was a “serious but isolated lapse in judgment” and rather than any kind of “ongoing criminal behavior,” they said, and it had had no victims: “Mr. Hatch did not discharge a firearm or cause harm.”
In his statement following the hearing, Boosie suggested that he would seek even further to clear his name by seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump — an outcome he has already hired lobbyists to seek: “Praying for a pardon now, you know.”
