Suge Knight appeared remotely from a San Diego prison Thursday and told a judge he was surprised to hear his longtime lawyer, David Kenner, had asked to withdraw as his attorney just weeks before a major civil trial.
Speaking over a phone line from his detention center, Knight told the court he wanted to move ahead with his April 7 re-trial over a civil lawsuit tied to the 2015 death of Compton businessman Terry Carter. He said he couldn’t proceed alone and rejected Kenner’s claim that an “irreconcilable conflict” had developed between them.
“I don’t want to put anyone in a bad situation, but I have some real concerns. I’ve known Mr. Kenner for a very long time, and I feel we still have a relationship,” Knight told the court. “I do want to move forward. I’m very tired and want to put this behind me. I never wanted any delays in the first place.”
After the 30-minute hearing, Los Angeles County Judge Thomas Long denied Kenner’s motion to withdraw, calling it “untimely” on the “eve of trial.” He kept the month-long jury trial’s planned Monday start but ordered the parties back for a final status conference Friday. He appeared open to a possible one-week delay if the parties agree to pare down their planned evidence and testimony.
Knight, 59, is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for his voluntary manslaughter conviction involving Carter’s hit-and-run death. While incarcerated, he faced an initial June 2022 civil trial over the wrongful death claims filed by Carter’s widow and daughters. That first trial ended with jurors deadlocked seven to five in favor of finding Knight liable. The trial set to begin Monday is a second attempt to resolve the case.
At the Thursday hearing, Kenner said he could no longer represent Knight after he learned something “disturbing” during a phone call with Knight in the last six weeks. He declined to elaborate, citing attorney-client privilege. He said after the call, he felt “anxious about being able to competently and energetically try this case.”
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Knight told the court he believed Kenner was referring to recent “death threats” allegedly made by a third party toward the lawyer. Kenner said that was not the case. He was adamant the third party had not threatened him, though he did recall feeling concerned about a witness who said something sinister when he was approached years ago to possibly testify.
“Mr. Knight is entitled to representation in which there’s no conflict,” Kenner told the court Thursday. “Both he and I are in a terrible position. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to [represent him].”
Knight again made the claim that his call with Kenner involved a discussion of “death threats.” He said there was no time to find a new lawyer and he didn’t want to wait. “I’m really in a bad position because I do feel bad about the death threats,” Knight said. “I don’t want to be in a situation where I go in a courtroom, and I end up losing because I’m by myself. I just want a fair trial, and I don’t want to see anyone get hurt, let alone get killed. I don’t want that on my conscience. I’m a God-fearing man. I love the lord. I’m doing everything I can to make my life better. I just want to get this behind me.”
After Judge Long made his ruling, Kenner asked for an expedited transcript of the proceeding. He said he planned to file an appeal. The judge said Kenner was free to do that but he didn’t plan to delay the trial on that basis.
“The court’s ruling puts me and even Mr. Knight in an improbable, impossible position, and I think an appellate court would overrule it,” Kenner tells Rolling Stone after the hearing. “I, of course, will also be requesting a stay during the pendency of the appeal.”
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Carter’s family claimed Knight acted negligently when he hit the gas on his Ford Raptor truck and fatally struck Carter in a Tam’s Burgers parking lot on Jan. 29, 2015. Knight denies any wrongdoing, claiming he was the victim of an armed ambush at the Compton burger stand and acted in self-defense.
Testifying from prison at the initial civil trial three years ago, Knight told jurors he accelerated because he feared for his life after another man, Cle “Bone” Sloan, allegedly brandished a gun and started punching him through his truck window. Sloan, who also was injured in the hit-and-run, denied having a gun during the confrontation. Testifying under a grant of immunity at a criminal hearing in 2015, Sloan said the item in his hands was a two-way radio that he used as a security guard on the set of the Dr. Dre– and Ice Cube-produced N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton.
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 in the hours after an alleged confrontation between Knight and Sloan outside a production office of the movie earlier that day.
Knight previously testified that he had visited the production office to speak with Dr. Dre. He claimed police had 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 in 2022. 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.
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Knight told jurors that Carter, whom 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 give him “some bread” amid a disagreement over Knight’s portrayal in the movie. (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 said.)
Knight’s retrial in the civil case was postponed five times before it was set for April 7. The music mogul asked for more time last October as he sought to gain release from custody with claims he was coerced into accepting the 2018 plea agreement that reduced his murder charge to a manslaughter charge in the criminal hit-and-run case. A judge denied Knight’s bid to overturn the 28-year-sentence in a ruling last month.
