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Marion Hugh "Suge" Knight pleaded "no contest" to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Terry Carter in Compton, California. In January 2015, Knight, the former producer and founder of rap label Death Row Records, allegedly hit Carter and Cle "Bone" Sloan with his truck, killing Carter and severely injuring Sloan.
Though Knight claimed this was in self-defense, as someone had just threatened his life with a gun, evidently it didn't appear that this defense could be proven. After going through 15 defense lawyers and sitting in a Los Angeles County Jail for the last three years awaiting trial because his bail had been revoked, Suge waived his right to a jury trial and accepted a plea deal.
According to the deal, Knight will spend 28 years in prison. Though the original charge only carried a sentence of 11 years, that sentence was doubled under the Three Strikes provision, since Knight has a few prior convictions. Five years were added for conviction of a serious felony, and one more for using a deadly weapon (the truck).
All in, however, this is still less than he may have faced in the murder and attempted murder trial that was set to start in a few days. Also, as part of the deal, prosecutors dropped two other pending cases against Knight: a 2014 charge for stealing a woman's camera, and a 2017 charge for threatening F. Gary Gray, director of "Straight Outta Compton".
Suge Knight has a long rap sheet, and we're not talking the music genre. To list just a few examples:
If Suge Knight's name seems more notorious than just the killing of Terry Carter, it should. One of Knight's biggest stars, Tupac Shakur, was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada in September 1996, just hours after Suge's 1996 assault. Shakur's East Coast rival, The Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie Smalls) was murdered while traveling in Los Angeles just six days later, also in a drive-by shooting. The similarity of the two cases created speculation that Knight was involved in this "revenge killing" of Biggie. Some, however, speculate that he was also involved in Tupac's murder, and potentially even the death of Eazy-E, who died of AIDS.
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