T.I. was taken to the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta two weeks ago when Bureau of Prisons officials cut short his furlough just a day after it started because they believed he violated his furlough agreement.
When T.I. walked out of an Arkansas prison on August 31, he tweeted, "The storm is over & da sun back out." A cloud, however, quickly rained on the rapper's freedom parade.
Prison documents obtained by CNN showed prison officials objected to his manager and a reality TV producer riding with him on a luxury bus on the trip from the Federal Correctional Center in Forrest City, Arkansas, to Georgia.
They quickly removed him from the halfway house, where he had expected to spend the last month of his sentence, and relocated him to the Atlanta prison.
Defense lawyer Steve Sadow pushed federal prison officials to reconsider, pointing out that the furlough agreement did not specifically state others could not ride with the popular hip-hop artist, whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr.
"We have good reason to believe that this favorable result was reached because of the proactive and assertive approach taken to protect T.I.'s rights by providing BOP (Bureau of Prisons) officials and the media with reliable and accurate information that T.I. did not intend to violate his transfer furlough or any other BOP rules en route from the prison facility in Arkansas to the halfway house in Atlanta," Sadow said Thursday.
It was initially believed prison officials objected to his use of a luxury tour bus for the trip from Arkansas to Georgia, but the furlough agreement T.I. signed specified only that he would travel in a "POV," a privately owned vehicle.
He will leave the halfway house and begin a yearlong probation term on September 29, Sadow said.
The rapper served two stints in the Arkansas prison. He was there for seven months in 2009 as part of a sentence negotiated two years ago to resolve federal gun charges. Those charges followed his attempt to buy three machine guns in the parking lot of an Atlanta grocery store.
His latest time behind bars was triggered by his arrest, along with his wife, after a motorcycle officer stopped their car on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California, a year ago.
A police report said suspected drugs were found in the couple's car and they were both arrested on drug charges. The charge against the rapper was later dropped, but he failed a drug test given by his parole officer
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.
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