Earlier this year, Sean Kingston and his mother Janice Turner were convicted on various fraud charges, and one of them has now learned their fate. According to AllHipHop, Turner was sentenced on Tuesday (July 22) to five years in federal prison and three years of supervised release. On top of her sentence, she's been ordered to pay restitution to the victims, though the final amount has not yet been determined.
News of Turner's sentence comes just a couple days after she asked Judge David S. Leibowitz for 30 months. This is less than half of what the sentencing guidelines recommended, which was 63 to 78 months. Her team argued that even the lower end of that range would be too harsh of a punishment for a 62-year-old with “a myriad of health issues” and “minimal criminal history.”
“Ms. Turner will go to prison; she has earned the prison sentence,” her attorneys stated at the time. “However, a sentence greater than thirty months is a waste of taxpayer resources based upon the history and characteristics of Ms. Turner.”
Sean Kingston Sentence
Turner addressed the judge directly before receiving her sentence. “I’m sorry. My intention was to keep my son afloat in this difficult industry. They used him and abused him. I am begging for mercy for me and my son,” she told him.
Her team says they plan to appeal parts of the ruling. "It was a hard-fought sentence, so we have mixed feelings on it," her attorney Humberto Dominguez explained, per NBC6. "We won on some points and obviously lost on some points. All of which will be handled on appeal. So we have mixed feelings on it. Overall, the judge tried to do what was right and what was fair."
As for Kingston, he did not attend the sentencing, but reportedly submitted a letter in support of his mother. His own sentencing is scheduled to take place on August 28. He is currently on house arrest after posting bond.
