Nicki Minaj’s Husband, Kenneth Petty, Pleads Guilty to Failing to Register as Sex Offender
Nicki Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, pleaded guilty to failure to register as a sex offender after he moved from New York to California.
Petty had previously pleaded not guilty to the charge, but changed his plea in court documents filed in California Thursday, September 9th. He will return to court for a sentencing hearing on January 24th.
Petty is required by law to register as a sex offender after being convicted of first-degree attempted rape in New York in 1995. Petty was 16 at the time and served nearly four years in a state penitentiary.
A lawyer for Petty did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Petty officially struck a deal to plead guilty to the charge back in August. In early September, a lawyer representing Jennifer Hough, the woman Petty was convicted of attempting to rape, issued a letter to the presiding judge requesting that Petty’s plea deal be rejected. “Kenneth Petty has no rehabilitative characteristics,” the letter read. “He is a criminal whose only solution to life’s challenges is to stoop to unconscionable depths to secure his depraved desires. Kenneth Petty belongs in prison.”
Per NBC News, Petty moved from New York to California in July 2019. The following November, he was arrested during a traffic stop after authorities discovered that he had failed to register as a sex offender in California; he was later released on $20,000 bond. In March 2020, Petty turned himself in to authorities for the same reason, and was released on $100,000 bond.
In August, Hough sued Petty and Minaj for intimidation. In the suit, Hough alleged that Minaj “directly and indirectly intimidated, harassed and threatened [Hough] to recant her legitimate claim that Defendant Petty raped her.” The suit claimed that Petty and Minaj’s alleged attempts to get Hough to recant was spurred in part by Petty’s arrest for failing to register as a sex offender in California.