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Celebrity Sightings in New York City - February 12, 2020

Source: Robert Kamau / Getty

Nicki Minaj’s husband has asked to push back his imminent trial for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender.

Lawyers for Kenneth Petty last week filed court papers asking the judge in the case to push his trial, which was originally set to begin in June, to September, because he said the COVID-19 pandemic has frustrated his attempts to gather evidence and his lawyers had several pressing trials to attend to.

Petty’s lawyers Andrew Stein and Joseph Markus asked for more time to prepare for their client’s defense, arguing that they had to sift through some 700 pages of legal documents, photographs and recordings that the feds turned over to them as part of the discovery process. They said that their own attempts to gather evidence from the New York Supreme Court and the state’s Department of Parole were hampered because the courts have been closed due to the pandemic.

And his attorneys said they’re currently in the midst of defending several other trials that were literally matters of life and death: the death penalty was on the table in one case and in another, their client plead not guilty to murder by reason of insanity, according to court papers obtained by BOSSIP.

Stein and Markus said the government was OK with postponing the trial.

In February 2020, a Grand Jury indicted Petty on a felony charge of failure to register as a sex offender. The feds said Petty had been living in L.A. with Minaj for about six months without registering his status, which is a requirement under the terms of his attempted rape conviction from the 1990s. Petty has pleaded not guilty and is out on a $100,000 bond. If he’s convicted, he faces up to a decade behind bars.

A judge has yet to rule on the motion.

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