It's April 28, 2024, 11:24:58 PM
I still love Suge in a way
Suge Knight's image as thug and feared enforcer crumbled in courtJudge Ronald S. Coen detailed the plea agreement Thursday afternoon.Suge Knight was almost always cheery in court.Whenever the judge overseeing his murder case cracked a sarcastic aside, the former rap impresario belly laughed so hard his broad shoulders bounced for several seconds. Where he could, he slipped compliments to Judge Ronald S. Coen.“I trust you,” Knight told him during a pretrial hearing. “You’ve been my judge and my advisor…You’re my only friend now.”Coen smiled.As the kowtowing played out in court hearings over the past three years, it became hard to reconcile the man with a graying beard seated at the defense table with his longtime image as one of the most powerful and intimidating men in music.In the burgeoning West Coast rap scene he helped popularize, chronicling gang life, drugs and police brutality, Knight was an imposing figure — a swaggering record producer with a cigar in his mouth and a diamond-studded “MOB” ring on his pinky finger. The Death Row Records co-founder long swore he’d acted in self-defense on the murder rap and deserved to be set free. But on Thursday, four days before his trial was scheduled to start, he struck a deal with prosecutors, capping his cinematic legal saga with an anti-climactic coda.Knight pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter for ramming his truck into two men in the driveway of a Compton burger restaurant on Jan. 29, 2015, following an argument on the set of a commercial for the N.W.A biopic “Straight Outta Compton.” One of the men — Terry Carter, a 55-year-old businessman known for his boundless generosity — was fatally injured.The deal, under which Knight, 53, could serve up to 28 years in prison, perplexed some onlookers, but defense experts said eleventh-hour moves aren’t uncommon and often pay off. In the weeks leading up to a trial, prosecutors must give the defense a list of people they plan to call as witnesses, said criminal defense attorney Peter Johnson, who lectures at UCLA Law School.“You can pretty much predict the testimony and how damaging that will be and you weigh the risks of conviction,” Johnson said.If convicted at trial, Knight faced life in prison. The former record producer’s court-appointed attorney, Albert DeBlanc Jr., declined to comment after the deal, but it’s likely that video evidence played into his client’s calculus. Prosecutors had surveillance footage from Tam’s Burgers capturing the moment Knight’s Ford F-150 pickup barreled over the men before fleeing the scene.Knight, who turned himself into authorities a day after the hit-and-run, has said there were people with guns at the scene and that he hit the men while fleeing for his life. In court papers filed last year, Knight claimed that his former business partner Dr. Dre paid $20,000 to have him murdered, adding that a hit man was at the burger stand that day. (An attorney for Dr. Dre dismissed the accusations as “absurd.”)Los Angeles criminal defense attorney R.J. Manuelian said he’s confident that Knight’s lawyer didn’t have a solid witness to corroborate the gun theory — “a real big weakness in the case,” he said.“The only way they’d win is if the jury believed Suge Knight, which is a tall order,” said Manuelian, who followed the case since the 2015 arrest and planned to offer television commentary throughout the trial.Born Marion Hugh Knight Jr., the Compton native was a standout athlete. He played football in college and, for a split second in 1987, joined the Los Angeles Rams as a replacement player during the strike. Standing 6-foot-4, Knight’s size led to his next gig as a bodyguard for celebrities, including R&B singer Bobby Brown.In the early 1990s, Knight and Dr. Dre formed Death Row Records and as the seminal label exploded into a $100-million-a-year enterprise, Knight built an infamous reputation. Some compared him to notorious mobster John Gotti and newspapers almost universally described him with a trio of adjectives — feared, imposing, intimidating.Through the years, he built a lengthy rap sheet, including a 1992 arrest, in which authorities accused him of ordering two aspiring rappers to their knees in a Hollywood studio and pistol-whipping one of the men in an argument over use of a company phone.Late in the summer in 1996, Knight was driving a BMW just off the Las Vegas Strip when an unknown gunman fatally shot his passenger, rapper Tupac Shakur. A few months later, a judge sentenced Knight to nine years in prison for violating his probation in the assault case by getting in a fight at a Las Vegas hotel hours before the fatal shooting.In “Straight Outta Compton,” Knight is a depicted as a menacing and cruel enforcer who pistol-whips a man for taking his parking spot and watches with a smirk as henchmen beat N.W.A founder Eazy-E. Outraged by his portrayal, as well as the fact he didn’t get paid for the use of his likeness, authorities say Knight sent a threatening text message to the movie’s director, F. Gary Gray. In 2017, grand jurors indicted Knight of criminally threatening the director.That case, as well as a robbery charge stemming from a 2014 incident, in which prosecutors say Knight and comedian Micah "Katt" Williams snatched a woman’s camera, will be dismissed under the plea agreement.The courtroom conclusion this week could well mean the last public chapter in the life of a one-time icon who authorities say had a habit of threatening anyone who crossed him.Many of the former producer’s family and friends say his tough-guy image was never the full story.He’s always had a fun spirit and a soft side, Knight’s sister, Karen Anderson, said. That’s how he got his childhood nickname — a shortened version of Sugar Bear. In recent years, when family gathered at their mother’s home, Anderson said, her brother sat in a circle with the children playing “duck, duck goose.”“I’m not sugarcoating anything. I’m not saying he’s an angel,” Anderson said. “But he’s not the person everyone’s portraying him to be either.”To criminal defense attorney David Chesnoff, who represented Knight in two assault cases and a federal investigation years ago, Knight’s courtroom joviality is no surprise.“He understands that a judge is a judge,” Chesnoff said. “He’s a much more sophisticated person than given credit for.”His former client, Chesnoff said, has always been a complex person — a big tough guy, sure, but also a charismatic businessman who understood industry expectations at the height of Death Row’s power.“The artists he represented also had the same kind of image as part of the scene that they were in, but many of them have become like household names,” Chesnoff said. “Snoop [Dogg] does TV shows with my other client, Martha Stewart. Who would have thought?”Since Knight’s arrest three years ago, the murder case took one bizarre turn after another.“I’m not saying he’s an angel. But he’s not the person everyone’s portraying him to be either.”Karen Anderson, Marion "Suge" Knight's sisterDuring one court hearing, bailiffs rushed a trash can to Knight who said he might vomit and at the end of another hearing — when a judge set his bail at $25 million — paramedics swooped in with a gurney after Knight collapsed.“Just, bam,” recounted defense attorney Matthew Fletcher, who represented Knight at the time. There was the time the former mogul complained about having lost 67 pounds behinds bars and another time he told the judge he was having problems with swelling in his hands.The judge offered a bit of reassurance: “I’ve got to tell you, Mr. Knight, you’re looking good.” The former impresario let out a high-pitched laugh, thanking the judge.Earlier that day, when Coen mentioned a proposed trial date several months in the future, Knight quipped that he was hoping for an earlier time: “I was thinking next week.”Coen threw his head back, chuckling and Knight nodded, as if pleased the joke had landed.Another morning in court, while rambling about his heavily restricted phone, mail and visitation privileges at Men’s Central Jail, Knight dropped another one-liner. He mentioned the famous insurance commercial, where a person in distress says a jingle and someone materializes to help them. In his cell, as he longed for meaningful interaction, Knight told the judge, he sometimes thought of the jingle: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”“Nobody pops up,” Knight added.20 years later, Notorious B.I.G.'s killing remains one of L.A.'s biggest unsolved homicides »Often Knight came to court with the same request: I want a new attorney. He hired and fired more than a dozen, including two men — Fletcher and Thaddeus Culpepper — now facing criminal charges of their own. Both attorneys have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges stemming from what prosecutors say was an attempt to bribe witnesses in exchange for helpful testimony in the aging mogul’s case. Knight — who filed for bankruptcy in 2006 — ultimately faced the most serious criminal charge of his life with a court-appointed attorney.Knight’s fiancee, Toi-Lin Kelly, is serving three years in jail for violating the conditions of her probation after prosecutors say that she, Knight, Fletcher and one of Knight’s business partners, Mark Blankenship, hatched a plan to sell the surveillance video from Tam’s Burgers to the celebrity news website TMZ for $55,000. (Coen had specifically ordered that the video not be released to the media.)During Knight’s preliminary hearing, the crowd squeezed into Coen’s courtroom got a glimpse of the defendant’s power to inspire fear. While on the stand, the surviving victim of the 2015 hit-and-run, Cle “Bone” Sloan, broke down in tears.“I'm no snitch,” he said. “I will not be used to send Suge Knight to prison."Coen ruled there was enough evidence for Knight to stand trial — but not enough, he said, to justify Knight's $25-million bail.After the bail was lowered to $10 million, Fletcher — not yet involved in his own legal proceedings — told reporters that Knight had a famous friend ready to help. If Floyd Mayweather Jr. won his upcoming boxing match, Fletcher said, he planned to bail Knight out of jail.Mayweather won, but the money never came.In court Thursday, Knight — reportedly frustrated to take a deal in front of so many reporters — looked worn down, subdued. When Coen asked if he wanted to take the deal, the mogul responded simply, “Yes.”The judge explained that, although it may not apply to Knight, he had a duty to inform him that if a defendant is not a citizen, a conviction can lead to deportation.“So ICE is coming to get me?” Knight asked.The judge closed his eyes and laughed.
For Death Row’s Suge Knight — violent bully, music executive — it seems the ride is overKnight had Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac, and now he will serve up to 28 years in prison for manslaughterAn unnamed Death Row Records employee had messed up. Really, really bad. Botched flights? Incorrect hotel bookings? Who knows. Any mistake made under the perpetually lit cigar of Marion “Suge” Knight could spawn violent and humiliating consequences.The rapper Kurupt, when he visited Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club earlier this month, couldn’t remember the exact nature of the particular transgression. The event happened more than 20 years ago. What he did remember, though, were the details. Like Knight roughing up an employee up before sitting on the employee in the bathroom. And Knight’s impossible and grotesque ultimatum.“Where’s the bucket?” Knight asked. He had ordered everyone nearby to urinate in a bucket. “You gonna drink this, or I’m gonna whoop your ass. For real.”If he does the entire bid, Knight will be 81 years old at the time of his release.According to Kurupt, the employee, both terrified for his life and protective of what little pride remained in his body, squealed. He pleaded for another option. Any option. These were just words to Knight, then the most imposing, feared and successful grassroots story in America. The cries — an aphrodisiac to his power trip. “Which one you want? You gotta get ready to get on the stage now.”The employee drank the urine. He was fired, and Kurupt never heard from him again. Much of the same can be said about the man who inflicted that trauma. Through urban legends and confirmed narratives like Kurupt’s, Knight had graduated to an archetypal figure in rap’s lineage. But much like the Death Row pawn he allegedly forced to drink bodily fluids, Knight’s aura of invincibility and reign of terror is now a story from the past.“When I get out,” Knight said almost nonchalantly on Jan. 30, 2015, “I can always smoke it.” The it was the half-smoked cigar he placed in a tree outside of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Knight was turning himself in for questioning after a hit-and-run that left 55-year-old Terry Carter dead.The incident, now immortalized in Knight’s legacy just as much as Death Row’s meteoric rise and unparalleled demise, occurred after the former mogul discovered his likeness would be portrayed in the 2015 F. Gary Gray-directed Straight Outta Compton (Gray was also threatened by Knight). After a disagreement on the film’s set involving Cle “Bone” Sloan, Carter attempted to mediate a peace between the two men at Tam’s Burgers in Compton, California. What happened next depends on which side of the story is being told. But Knight, after being attacked by Sloan in the parking lot of Tam’s, propelled his Ford F-150 out of the parking lot, hitting both men. Sloan survived, but despite whatever beef he carried with Knight in the streets, it wouldn’t be taken to a courtroom. “I will not be used to send Suge Knight to prison,” he said then.For 3½ years, Knight, strapped with a bail the judge refused to budge on, sat in custody. The only time he’d see the outside world was during transportation to the jail and the courthouse. Or during transportation to and from an area hospital because of his deteriorating health. Knight, 53, has long battled diabetes and blood clots, among other health issues.Knight was a cocktail of Wesley Snipes as Nino Brown, John Gotti and Tom Lister as Deebo.A dizzying amount of legal maneuvering prolonged a trial date that was pushed back more times than a post-Dre, post-Snoop or post-Tupac Death Row release date. As for Knight’s fiancée? Toi-Lin Kelley is serving three years for helping Knight violate a court order that forbade him from communicating with parties other than his lawyer about the case. A case he’s lost.On Sept. 20, Knight stood in a Los Angeles courtroom. Long gone are the entourages packed with the Mob Piru Bloods. His famous beard, once glistening, is peppered with gray due to age, but equally as likely to the stress of an ending Knight, better than anyone else, knew was inevitable. His legal issues, at this point, are historic. His life in the public eye has been based on mystique, power, intimidation and violence. The end of his saga has arrived abruptly and quietly.According to the Los Angeles Times, the framework for the plea deal began Sept. 19. Knight stood in front of Judge Ronald S. Cohen on the morning of Sept. 20 in Los Angeles to learn his fate. Did he accept the terms? “Yes,” said Knight, in a patented orange jumpsuit. The onetime impresario pleaded no contest to avoid a trial that, had he been convicted, would have sent him away for life without the possibility of parole.Life, contextually speaking, for Knight is over. His manslaughter charge comes with an 11-year sentence but is doubled because of Knight’s prior felony convictions. Six more years were tacked on because of Knight’s use of a deadly weapon to commit a violent felony. His other pending cases were dismissed as part of the deal. It all adds up to potentially 28 years as a property of the state. If he does the entire bid, Knight will be 81 years old at the time of his release in 2046.Knight’s aura — what made Marion, Suge — was that no one employed intimidation to their advantage like Knight. He’s a man who used fear to create an empire. Knight was a cocktail of Wesley Snipes as Nino Brown, John Gotti and Tom Lister as Deebo. “Interscope was a couple weeks from going bankrupt before they met me. Interscope wanted [Dr. Dre],” Knight once said. “I said, ‘Hey, I gotta own the masters. We gotta own the masters.’ They said, ‘How do you know about that?’ I said, ‘I know the business. We not gonna be the ones doing all the work and you get all the money and own it.’ Modern-day slavery. No different.”There was a terrible energy buzzing around Knight. A young, handsome and large black man from South Central was strong-arming an industry. He represented a rallying cry and a fearsome gathering point. If you were a young black man from the ‘hoods of Los Angeles, Death Row was, from the outside looking in, a safe haven in an environment of police brutality, drugs and gangbanging. It looked like, yeah, Suge banged red, but the color he really loved? Green. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle and Dogg Pound’s Dogg Food gave the label instant and eternal credibility.The addition of Tupac Shakur in 1995 made Death Row just surreal. By 1996, Death Row was netting more than $100 million a year. And Suge owned 34 cars. Thuggin’ was not only paying the bills but also making kids from South Central Los Angeles richer than anyone could’ve ever imagined.But by 1996, the label’s very public descent began. Dr. Dre left the label in March. Shakur was dead by September. And Suge was in prison for probation violation stemming from the Orlando Anderson fight the night Shakur was mortally wounded in Las Vegas. Snoop, after a disappointing sophomore album in Tha Doggfather, left for Master P’s No Limit Records. Knight had perhaps the greatest collection of high-level talent in rap history and lost it all within a year.Death Row never recovered. The label stayed afloat for several years while Knight sat in prison, but it never regained its dominance. After years of financial shortcomings and subpar releases, Death Row’s death blow arrived in 2005 when Lydia Harris won an astonishing $107 million settlement for damages and royalties. Knight and Dr. Dre started Death Row, but Harris’ husband, the infamous and incarcerated Michael “Harry O” Harris, was its chief investor.The following year, Death Row filed for bankruptcy. “They auctioned off everything,” said former Death Row artist Crooked I. “They even sold Suge’s boxer briefs that they found in the penthouse suites on top of the Death Row building. … He was one of the only African-American men to own a major building on Wilshire Boulevard, and they sold the man’s f—in’ drawers.”No image personifies Knight and Death Row more than the 1996 “Live From Death Row” VIBE cover, a tour de force unlike anything the still young genre of hip-hop had ever seen. A beatsmith that changed the sound of music in Dre. A young charismatic emcee with the delivery of a jazz great (who’d just beat a murder rap) in Snoop. The culture’s most prolific, controversial and enrapturing star in Tupac. And the shot caller in Knight. Dre and Snoop went on to become titans of American music. Shakur, the only one to physically perish, is nothing short of a religious figure for hip-hop fans. Yet, it’s Knight who could be seen as the one who died the most.“Ain’t nobody gonna leave here alive,” Knight prophetically said during the apex of his dominance and terror. “Everybody is born and everybody’s going to die. Period. That’s the way it’s played. Can’t nobody change that.”Having long since lost his grip on a culture he helped construct, Knight is living that axiom: Being so deeply connected to the streets only lands you, as most everyone’s elders have always said, dead or in jail — or, even worse, as one enters jail spiritually dead already.“[Falling down] either inspires you to get up and create something bigger,” Crooked I said, “or you crumble up inside and become bitter. … Suge had his opportunity to win. He chose to — you know a lot of people just stay stuck in time. The ’90s is gone, man. Some people gotta change … and some people just don’t wanna change.”
Daz Dillinger Is All Smiles Following Suge Knight's 28-Year Prison SentenceJudging by the singing and celebratory blunt, Daz Dillinger isn’t losing any sleep over Suge Knight’s recent prison sentence. The former Death Row Records CEO was sentenced to 28 years in prison earlier this week, bringing that chapter to an unceremonious close.Dillinger took to Instagram on Friday (September 21) to express his thoughts on the sentencing.“Wake and bake y’all,” he begins. “They wondered how the Suge Knight story was going to end. It ended yesterday. 28 years in the penitentiary. You 53 years old. 28 years and you wonder how the story of Suge Knight ended.“The Death Row story ended yesterday. You wonder how life goes and you wonder how life is. And it just ended, you know what I mean? [Laughs]. I don’t know what to think. Do you know what I’m thinking? Shout out to Suge Knight, Jr. Go visit your daddy in prison. He needs you.”From there, he starts singing as he sparks up the blunt.“THE SUGE KNIGHT STORY HAS ENDED,” he wrote in the caption. “NOW U CAN DO YOUR DEATHROW MOVIE. FUCC CUZ.” View this post on Instagram THE SUGE KNIGHT STORY HAS ENDED NOW U CAN DO YOUR DEATHROW MOVIE 🎥 FUCC CUZ A post shared by DAZ DILLINGER (@dazdillinger) on Sep 21, 2018 at 5:43am PDTTha Dogg Pound rapper/producer was signed to Death Row in 1992 and contributed to classics such as Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Snoop Dogg’s Doggstyle. During the imprint’s heyday, Dre grew increasingly frustrated with Knight’s violent tendencies and left to start Aftermath Entertainment. Daz ended his tenure at Death Row in 1999.Knight, on the other hand, went on to run the label into the ground for the next several years and filed for bankruptcy in 2006.Knight has been in jail since 2015 when he was arrested for the hit-and-run death of Terry Carter. He copped to voluntary manslaughter and admitted he used his vehicle as a deadly weapon. He could potentially spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Suge Knight gave everyone in court -- including his victim's family members -- something to remember him by ... one last steely glare as he was officially sentenced to 28 years in prison. TMZ
The Latest: Prison sentence handed down to ‘Suge’ KnightLOS ANGELES (AP) — The Latest on the sentencing of former rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight on an voluntary manslaughter charge for a fatal 2015 altercation (all times local):9:45 a.m.A judge has sentenced Marion “Suge” Knight to 28 years in prison nearly four years after the former rap mogul killed a man with his truck.Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen handed down the sentence as expected Thursday for running over and killing businessman Terry Carter outside a Compton burger stand in 2015.Members of Carter’s family addressed the court including daughter Crystal, who called Knight “a disgusting, selfish disgrace to the human species.”Knight stared forward throughout.Knight avoided a murder trial that was about to begin when he agreed two weeks ago to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter and accept the sentence.The Death Row Records co-founder appeared in court for the sentencing wearing orange prison attire with chains on his arms and legs alongside Albert Deblanc Jr., his 16th lawyer in the case.___9:30 a.m.Family members of a man struck and killed by Marion “Suge” Knight are addressing a Los Angeles judge before the former rap mogul is sentenced for involuntary manslaughter.Knight struck and killed businessman Terry Carter with his pickup truck outside a Compton burger stand in January 2015. Carter was described as a deeply devoted husband, father, grandfather and friend during the hearing.Carter’s daughter Crystal called Knight “a disgusting, selfish disgrace to the human species” during Thursday’s sentencing hearing.The 53-year-old Knight is expected to be sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading no contest last month to voluntary manslaughter for Carter’s death.___This story has been corrected to show Knight pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter.___3 a.m.Former rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight is expected to be sentenced to nearly three decades in prison in a Los Angeles court.The hearing Thursday for the 53-year-old Death Row Records co-founder comes almost four years after Knight killed one man and injured another with his truck outside a Compton burger stand.Knight struck a surprise plea agreement on Sept. 20, a few days before his murder trial was set to begin.He pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and agreed to a prison sentence of 28 years.The sentence comes at the end of a long decline for Knight from his pinnacle in the mid-1990s, when he worked with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur to put out some of the most important records in hip-hop history.
I'm quite surprised by this. I thought there was a possibility he might get off lightly since the CCTV footage appears to show him being approached by someone who looks intent on doing him some harm, and then him gunning it in his car was maybe an act of self-defence. That's the way it looks to the untrained eye anyway, obviously it goes much deeper than that. Either way, I doubt that he intended to hit and run over Terry Carter since they were friends and business associates.I was sort of hoping he'd get off any charges and then we'd get the big interview and all the old Suge antics again, maybe a book deal about his life and times at the helm of Death Row Records. Just a sad situation all round, really.
Media will push this to taint Suge as a predatory exploiter in the business when he actually helped a lot of people out when others wouldn’t
I’m not condoning what Suge done but I can understand it.
Quote from: V2DHeart on October 12, 2018, 09:13:28 AM I’m not condoning what Suge done but I can understand it. Should he get a shorter sentence because you pity him?
Quote from: Zuka on October 14, 2018, 12:52:45 AMQuote from: V2DHeart on October 12, 2018, 09:13:28 AM I’m not condoning what Suge done but I can understand it. Should he get a shorter sentence because you pity him?if it wasn’t for the priors he coulda easily got off on a non-guilty verdict
Quote from: Sccit on October 14, 2018, 01:25:36 AMQuote from: Zuka on October 14, 2018, 12:52:45 AMQuote from: V2DHeart on October 12, 2018, 09:13:28 AM I’m not condoning what Suge done but I can understand it. Should he get a shorter sentence because you pity him?if it wasn’t for the priors he coulda easily got off on a non-guilty verdictBut should he have gotten off? The judge didn't sentence him for no reason, you know.