The 6ix9ine case isn't completely over just yet, but it got one step closer.
Anthony "Harv" Ellison, convicted in October of kidnapping and robbing the rainbow-haired rapper, asked Judge Paul Engelmayer last month for a new trial—or, alternately, to reverse the jury's guilty verdicts against him. His co-defendant Aljermiah "Nuke" Mack made a similar motion, asking for the judge to reverse one of his guilty verdicts as well. On Friday, all their motions were denied.
Both men were convicted of being members of the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. Ellison, in addition to kidnapping, beating, and robbing 6ix9ine, was also found guilty of an October 2018 slashing. Mack was convicted of narcotics trafficking.
Judge Paul Engelmayer addressed the defendants' motions in an 18-page ruling. Ellison's lawyers argued during trial that 6ix9ine had staged his own kidnapping in order to gain public sympathy, and to bring attention to his then-new track "Fefe."
Engelmayer did not buy this explanation.
"The evidence of Ellison’s commission of this crime was overwhelming," he wrote, explaining that it included testimony from both 6ix9ine and his driver, video of the incident, and medical records and photos of 6ix9ine's injuries. "Ellison’s theory that he had colluded with Hernandez to stage a fake kidnapping was unsupported by any evidence at trial. And Ellison, who was in a position to attest as to his circumstances surrounding that incident—including, if true, that it was a staged, and not actual, kidnapping—elected not to testify."
Mack, for his part, was claiming that there was insufficient evidence that he had helped distribute one kilogram or more of heroin. But Judge Engelmayer wrote that the testimony of a cooperating witness, former Nine Trey member Kristian "CEO Kris" Cruz, made clear that Mack was involved with far more than that. And, the judge continued, recorded phone calls between Cruz and Mack backed that verdict up as well.
"Mack’s recorded conversations with heroin dealer Cruz supported the inference that Mack appreciated that the Nine Trey heroin conspiracy in which he was a participant was both protracted and high-volume, with aggregate distribution quantities way in excess of one kilogram," the judge wrote.
Mack is scheduled to be sentenced on February 19, with Ellison's sentencing to follow one week later.
