14 DAY TRIAL // Singer Lauryn Hill has paid in full her debt to the IRS but she will still do some time for failing to do so at the right moment. A judge has just sentenced her to 3 months in federal prison, it has emerged.
As we also informed you a couple of weeks ago, Hill pled guilty to tax evasion, but asked for a delay in sentencing so that she could pay back her debt, saying she had to retreat from the spotlight because of death threats she kept receiving.
She signed a new record deal to be able to afford the $1 million (€764,584) in back taxes but her willingness to set things right did not spare her the jail time.
“A judge in Newark, New Jersey dished out the sentence […] and told Hill that after she completes her stint behind bars, she'll spend 3 more months on house arrest, followed by 9 months of supervised release,” TMZ reports.
Video of Hill leaving the courthouse is below, embedded at the end of this post. Her attorney told the media afterwards that, considering that the government was asking for a 36-month sentence, a 3-month term is relatively ok.
In the courtroom, though, he had asked for clemency because of Hill’s charity work and her 6 kids at home.
The judge didn’t care about that, telling Hill she had until July 8 to report to prison to start her sentence.
In a statement to the judge, the singer compared her current situation to slavery.
“I was put into a system I didn't know the nature of... I'm a child of former slaves. I got into an economic paradigm and had that imposed on me. I sold 50 million units... now I'm up here paying a tax debt. If that's not likened to slavery, I don't know what is,” she told the judge.