Judge Who Sentenced Meek Mill to Prison Has Been Transferred to Civil Court

Genece Brinkley, the Pennsylvania judge who sentenced Meek Mill to prison, is facing her own legal battle.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the 66-year-old judge was transferred to civil court this year amid growing concerns about her ethics and work management. Brinkley’s pending criminal cases were reportedly reassigned and subjected to reviews by various lawyers and judges, who allegedly found a pattern of questionable rulings and behavior; these include imposing illegal sentences, allowing sentences to run past their maximum date, and failing to “quickly address cases remanded to her by higher courts.”

Brinkley filed a petition this month to reserve the transfer, saying the reassignment “raises unwarranted suspicions about [her] integrity and performance.”

“The last place that such shenanigans can be allowed is in our courts where integrity must be the hallmark,” she wrote.

The petition, which was submitted to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, came months after Brinkley filed a racial and gender discrimination complaint against Lucretia Clemons and Lisette Shirdan-Harris, two Black supervising judges for the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. Brinkley, who is also Black, declined to provide details about the alleged discrimination, but said it was “based on race, age, and gender.”

Brinkley became a judge in 1993, and won retention elections in 2003 and 2013. Her time on the bench has been widely scrutinized, with many calling her rulings unjust and heavy-handed. That criticism was fueled in 2017, when she slapped Mill with a two-to-four-year prison sentence for probation violations. The sentencing, which stemmed from a decade-old drug and gun conviction, sparked nationwide calls from criminal justice reform.