DMX News

The dog days of two summers ago—make that the mistreating dog days—have resulted in a dark day for DMX.

The rapper today was sentenced to 90 days in a Phoenix jail, stemming from his guilty plea last month to one count each of animal cruelty, theft, marijuana possession and possession of a narcotic.

In addition to his three-month lockup, the minimum he could have faced as a result of last month's plea deal, the arrest-prone artist, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was placed on 18 months probation for his misdeeds.

But if you think he received any special treatment, think again.

"I'm not sentencing DMX today, I'm sentencing Earl Simmons," Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Phemonia Miller said during the hearing. "I don't know DMX. Mr. Simmons, it's time to do something different. What you have been doing is not working."

To further drive the point home, Miller said she would not give the rapper any credit for the nearly two months he's already spent in police custody.

While he originally faced more than a dozen possible charges as a result of an August 2007 raid on his Arizona home, prosecutors opted not to slap the excess charges on the rapper as a result of his guilty plea.

The sentence is the result of a months-long investigation into reports of pit bull abuse that culminated in a search of his property, during which officials found 12 extremely malnourished pit bulls, three dead dogs, guns and ammunition and a significant amount of drugs and drug paraphernalia.

As it is, the 38-year-old has been held since Dec. 9, when he was arrested in Miami after failing to appear at a court hearing in his Phoenix case. It remains unclear where, exactly, the rapper will be locked up, as the commissioner agreed to let him apply to serve his sentence in Florida rather than his resident state.

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