Suge Knight says he was “coerced” into an “unlawful” 28-year prison sentence for killing a man with his truck in a Tam’s Burgers parking lot nearly a decade ago – and now he’s asking a California judge to postpone his fast-approaching November retrial over the wrongful death civil lawsuit brought by the widow and daughters of his victim.
In a new emergency motion, Knight’s longtime lawyer, David Kenner, says the Death Row Records founder is actively fighting the legality of his criminal plea deal and sentencing – wherein he pleaded “no contest” to a manslaughter charge reduced from a murder charge – and has an important hearing on the challenge set for Oct. 30. Kenner says he also plans to file a motion in the civil case seeking to exclude the plea deal at the upcoming retrial of the wrongful death case that first went before a jury in 2022 but suffered a mistrial. Kenner further claims he and Knight have “not been allowed” any in-person visits at Knight’s state prison in San Diego to prepare for the planned Nov. 12 retrial of the civil case, so a delay is warranted for that reason as well.
“I am not trying to delay the trial. I understand this is an old case. But my client has rights to a vigorous defense and his incarceration has impeded those rights,” Kenner wrote in a declaration asking for the three-month trial delay. The lawsuit was originally filed in June 2015, five months after Knight hit the gas on his F-150 truck and fatally struck Terry Carter while injuring another man, Cle “Bone” Sloan, in the parking lot of the Compton-based burger stand on Jan. 29, 2015. “I know that with the history of this case, that plaintiffs want their day in court. So does my client.”
Kenner wrote in his filings that the “brief” delay is necessary because he’s hopeful Knight will prevail with his pending challenge to his imprisonment, called a writ of habeas corpus, and gain his release after spending a decade behind bars. He wants an opportunity to “attend the re-trial in person as opposed [to] a prison conference room.” The lawyer said he hasn’t been able to “properly confer” with Knight because he’s allegedly limited to telephone communication that is “not secure.”
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“The defendant has been denied access to counsel such that he has been unable to participate in the defense of this action and assist in case strategy and decision-making necessary to mount a defense to the plaintiffs’ claims,” the new filing reads. “In addition, defendant is investigating the constitutionality of his no contest plea and anticipates a motion to prevent the use of the plea in the civil trial.”
The lawyer for Carter’s family did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment on Thursday. Attempts to reach the Los Angeles County prosecutor who handled Knight’s criminal plea deal were not successful. The initial trial over the civil claims brought by Terry Carter’s wife, Lillian Carter, and his daughters, Nekaya and Crystal, ended with jurors deadlocked seven to five in favor of finding Knight liable.
Graphic surveillance video depicting the deadly incident was shown repeatedly during the 2022 civil trial held in a Compton courtroom. In the footage, Knight’s truck is seen pulling into the Tam’s driveway after an alleged confrontation between Knight and Sloan earlier that day outside a production office for the Dr. Dre– and Ice Cube-produced N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. In the Tam’s video, a man identified as Sloan rushes up to Knight’s truck and begins a physical fight through the driver’s side window. The massive Ford Raptor truck then reverses away from the lot, hurling Sloan to the ground. Seconds later, the truck races back into view, barreling over Sloan, still crumpled on the ground, and fatally mowing down Carter, who had been standing on the sidewalk.
In his first-ever sworn testimony about the incident delivered live over a video link from his prison, Knight told the jurors that he had visited the production office that day in January 2015 to talk to Dre about his claim that police told him Dre had hired the man who shot Knight seven times at Chris Brown’s pre-VMA party in the summer of 2014. “I was going to talk to him and say, ‘Hey man, I’m not going to react to what authorities say about you having something to do with me getting shot or [having] paid somebody to get me killed. I just want to make you aware they are saying this,’” Knight testified. He claimed it wasn’t a big deal when Dre was “too busy” for a meeting and testified that it was Sloan who acted aggressively toward him as he departed the movie’s base camp, placing a security radio on his windshield.
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Knight, 59, told jurors that Carter, who he described as a longtime friend, called him later that day and invited him to a meeting with Dre at another man’s home across the street from Tam’s. He claimed Carter told him Dre wanted to “get some things squared away” and give him “some bread” amid a disagreement over Knight’s portrayal in the movie. He testified that he was the victim of an armed ambush outside Tam’s and punched the gas on his truck in fear for his safety. (Dre, through a lawyer, previously denied the allegation that he offered money to have Knight killed. “Given that Dre has had zero interaction with Suge since leaving Death Row Records in 1996, we hope that Suge’s lawyer has lots of malicious prosecution insurance,” the lawyer has said.)
Knight’s pending challenge to his imprisonment was attached as an exhibit to his request for the civil trial delay. It attacks his 2018 plea agreement on multiple grounds. In one section, it claims Knight asked to fire the public defender who represented him during the plea negotiations but was denied the request.
“After petitioner was forced to accept court-appointed trial counsel over his objections, petitioner was coerced into a plea agreement,” the writ argues. He alleges the lawyer “was a friend of the trial court judge” and that the lawyer gave him “ineffective assistance” when he failed to convince the court that Knight’s 1995 conviction on two counts of firearm assault should not have qualified as prior strikes under California’s “Three Strikes Law.” (Due to his prior strikes, Knight saw his 11-year sentence for his manslaughter conviction doubled to 22 years. He received six more years due to his admission he used a deadly weapon, meaning his truck, and because he had a prior serious felony.)
According to Knight, he believes his 1995 plea deal included an agreement that “there would be no strikes in the future.” “As a central part of that plea agreement, it was clearly sated that the felony convictions were to be reduced to misdemeanors, and that would eliminate the convictions as strikes for the purposes of the ‘Three Strikes Law,’” the writ reads. “The plea agreement was accepted by and fulfilled by petitioner in full.”
In an Aug. 1 filing by prosecutors obtained by Rolling Stone, Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Barnes disputes Knight’s claim he fulfilled the 1995 agreement. “Shortly after the plea agreement, defendant violated the terms of his probation. Defendant, Tupac Shakur, and several other men ‘jumped’ victim Orlando Anderson in a Las Vegas casino,” Barnes wrote. “The incident was recorded by the hotel surveillance cameras; defendant was clearly seen kicking the victim numerous times in the head.” She wrote that “after finding defendant in violation of the terms of his probation, the trial court sentenced him to serve nine years in state prison.”
As hip-hop fans know all too well, it was shortly after the Anderson beating that Knight was riding in a black 750 BMW with Shakur when someone in a rented Cadillac opened fire on the pair, fatally striking Shakur. Anderson’s uncle, Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, was arrested in September 2023 and charged with helping orchestrate the murder. His trial is set for March.
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For his part, Kenner makes clear in his new filing that he hopes a new criminal court judge will hear arguments on Knight’s habeas writ in January and issue a ruling by late February. He says the civil wrongful death trial should be postponed until after that decision.
“To be sure that this is a fair trial on the merits, I must be given a brief continuance to have the writ briefed and heard so that my client can have the opportunity to be present in person at the civil trial,” he wrote in his declaration filed Wednesday. A hearing on the delay request is set for Friday.
