T.I. asks for two-week delay in beginning sentence

Atlanta rap star T.I. will have to report to a low-security prison in Arkansas on Tuesday. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Judge Charles A. Pannell Jr. denied the rapper’s motion to delay reporting to prison. On Thursday, lawyers requested extra time to petition the federal Bureau of Prisons to house the rapper in a minimum security prison camp instead of the detention facility. “There is nothing more we can do pre-reporting,” said Donald F. Samuel, the rapper’s lawyer. “We think he was scored the wrong way.” T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., is scheduled to report to the Forrest City Correctional Institute on Tuesday. On Friday, Samuel said he plans to continue to ask the federal Bureau of Prisons to re-classify the music star once he is detained. T.I. will receive no special treatment and will be treated just like the other inmates, said Capt. R.D. Weeks, spokesman for the Forrest City prison. “Unless there is a need to alter, we operate normal Bureau of Prisons’ procedures,” Weeks said. T.I. will be housed with another inmate in one of 12 cubicle-style units, Weeks said. The rapper was sentenced to serve a year and a day for illegal firearms possession and being a convicted felon with a firearm. He was arrested Oct. 13, 2007, just hours before he was to receive two awards at the BET Hip-Hop Awards ceremony in Atlanta. He was taken into custody by federal agents at a Midtown parking lot for trying to buy machine guns and silencers. In Thursday’s court filing, T.I.’s lawyers said the rapper should be allowed to serve his time in a prison camp. He was assigned to go to the Forrest City facility because he had a prior offense that was designated to be a serious violent felony, T.I.’s lawyers said. But the prior offense did not involve a weapon and “amounted to little more than a ‘scuffle’ at a mall,” the motion said.