Somewhat to my chagrin, I have not been following the Suge Knight murder trial closely.
In fairness, though, the case has been going on for 3 1/2 years:
Knight has been behind bars since January 2015, when he was arrested and charged with intentionally ramming his Ford F-150 pickup into two men in the driveway of Tam’s Burgers at Central and East Rosecrans avenues in Compton.
One man, Terry Carter, died. The second man, Cle “Bone” Sloan, was badly injured but lived.
The whole thing became a circus more or less behind my back:
Knight’s case had evolved into a bizarre and winding legal saga long before Thursday’s plea agreement. In the three years since his arrest, Knight has tried to bolster his self-defense argument by claiming a hit man hired by Dr. Dre was present at Tam’s on the day of Carter’s death. Knight has cycled through more than a dozen attorneys on the murder case, seemingly firing lawyers indiscriminately. As recently as Wednesday he pleaded with Coen to fire his court-appointed defense attorney.
…
Prosecutors also accused Knight of conspiring with his fiancee and some of his prior attorneys to manipulate the case. Two members of Knight’s legal team — Matthew Fletcher and Thaddeus Culpepper — were arrested on charges of witness tampering this year. Knight’s fiancee, Toi-Lin Kelley, is serving three years in prison for helping Knight violate a court order that barred him from communicating with anyone other than his attorneys. She was also accused of helping arrange the sale of a video of the killing to gossip website TMZ, court records show.
Where is this going? Knight pled out to manslaughter yesterday:
The manslaughter charge carries an 11-year prison sentence, which will be doubled in Knight’s case because he has a prior felony conviction, according to a statement released by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. An additional six years will be added to that sentence because Knight was charged with using a deadly weapon to commit a violent felony, prosecutors said.
Remember, the deadly weapon in this case was a Ford F-150. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have pickup trucks.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2018 at 9:27 am and is filed under California Über Alles, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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