Two years after Suge Knight sought to overturn what he called his “illegally imposed” 28-year sentence in his hit-and-run manslaughter case, a Los Angeles County judge has rejected his bid as untimely and “not sincere.”
In a new ruling issued Tuesday and obtained by Rolling Stone, Los Angeles County Judge Laura F. Priver “summarily denied” Knight’s request, known as a writ of habeas corpus, saying he took too long to file it and didn’t have the grounds to support it either way. While Knight claimed in his March 2023 petition and subsequent filings that he was stymied by problems with his permanent prison housing, a lack of help from his prior lawyer, the Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that he’s blind in one eye, the judge said Knight was able to file other motions, so she wasn’t convinced.
“It is clear that the petitioner was not as isolated or as helpless to act as he wishes this court to believe. He was able to file the writ in a timely manner had he chosen to do so,” Judge Priver wrote.
Knight’s longtime lawyer, David Kenner, blasted the ruling. “I find this decision to be shocking and unconscionable,” Kenner tells Rolling Stone. “I think the court has grossly erred in the decision it rendered. I think it is legally improper and the court did not follow the law.”
Kenner vowed to filed an immediate writ of mandate with in the appellate court seeking a hearing on the underlying facts. He says Knight was entitled to an evidentiary hearing before any decision was rendered. “She’s deciding herself that she believes the [district attorney] and disbelieves Mr. Knight. It’s a deprivation of every consitutional right he has, and that frankly is nothing new in his case.” According to Kenner, “This case is the worst abuse of prosecutorial and judicial interference with the rights of the accused I’ve ever seen. He had less rights to be in contact with the lawyer of his choice than the people in Guantanamo Bay.”
Kenner stepped into the habeas effort last year and filed a lengthy reply in January reiterating the claim Knight had been held “virtually incommunicado” awaiting trial. Kenner further wrote that Knight’s prior public defender “coerced” him into taking a plea deal because “he was not prepared for trial” and Knight was facing a potential life sentence.
Knight, 59, is currently serving his 28-year sentence in San Diego, Calif., after he pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge stemming from a 2015 fatal hit-and-run. The deadly incident at Tam’s Burgers in Compton, California, claimed the life of local businessman Terry Carter. Prosecutors originally charged Knight with murder, claiming he reversed his Ford Raptor truck before intentionally shifting gears, hitting the gas, and mowing down Carter. They said Knight was “angry” because earlier in the day, he was turned away from a meeting with Dr. Dre and Ice Cube at an office for the movie Straight Outta Compton. Prosecutors claimed Knight was seeking compensation for his portrayal in the film.
Knight, meanwhile, has claimed he was the victim of an armed ambush at Tam’s and only hit the gas because he feared for his life. The criminal case avoided trial when Knight accepted a plea deal in September 2018. His court-appointed public defender at the time, Albert DeBlanc Jr., was his 14th defense lawyer on the case, the judge noted in her ruling.
In a declaration filed from prison, Knight claimed DeBlanc “forced me into a plea bargain/agreement for an unlawful sentence.” He claimed that after he was sentenced, the public defender failed to file his requested notice of appeal or anything attempting to “correct the unlawfully imposed and illegal sentence.”
While Judge Priver denied Knight’s petition because she found it was simply too old to bring, she still used the bulk of her 11-page ruling to address Knight’s claims that he was denied the right to represent himself, denied the lawyer of his choice, and ultimately coerced into accepting his plea deal. “The court recognizes that the law prefers decisions be made based on the merits rather than procedural bars. Therefore, the court will address each of the remaining claims on the merits,” she wrote.
Regarding Knight’s allegation that he asked to represent himself on three separate occasions and believes his Sixth Amendment right was violated, Judge Priver said that the first of Knight’s requests was interrupted by a medical emergency and then abandoned when Knight hired a new lawyer at his next hearing. She said the second request was made in a different case, and that the third one was made in 2018, with his “trial looming” after his case had been pending for three years. She said while Knight may have stated, “You guys got to give me a fair chance to represent myself,” in March 2018, he also told the court during the same hearing that he had hired a new lawyer who would be available to start the next week. “Taken in context, it was not a request to represent himself,” the judge found.
On the topic of Knight’s claims he was held in extreme isolation in a Los Angeles jail during his pre-trial confinement due to alleged “security risks,” the judge found that Knight was granted “nearly all requests for visits” from prospective lawyers, family members and investigators.
Citing court transcripts, the judge found that DeBlanc represented him adequately. She said DeBlanc had a number of civilian and expert witnesses on deck if the case had gone to trial and was able to argue pre-trial motions and negotiate a plea deal under which a murder charge carrying 25 years to life in prison was dropped.
“There is no valid evidence that the plea was coerced,” the judge wrote. “The fact that counsel only visited the petitioner two times in jail in not persuasive. It is not uncommon for counsel to wait to speak with their clients at the courthouse. … While counsel should perhaps have spent more time visiting, the fact that he didn’t come to the jail is meaningless.”
The judge also said it was “meaningless” that a civil jury failed to reach a verdict in the wrongful death and negligence trial involving civil claims brought by Terry Carter’s family. Knight had claimed in court filings that he learned about new evidence affecting his criminal case through that civil trial. The judge didn’t buy that argument.
“The occurrence of the civil trial is of no import,” Judge Priver wrote. “The witnesses as the civil trial were individuals who were present at the events which gave rise to the criminal prosecution, and therefore known to the petitioner. … There was nothing which can be viewed as ‘newly discovered evidence’ that arose from the civil matter. The fact that the civil case hung is irrelevant.”
A retrial of the civil case is set to begin April 7. Knight testified during the first trial in June 2022. Under oath, he claimed that police told him that Dr. Dre had hired the man who shot him seven times at Chris Brown’s pre-VMA party six months prior to his visit to the Straight Outta Compton set and Carter’s death. Knight claimed someone had shown him “cancelled checks” related to the alleged murder-for-hire plot. (For his part, Dre has denied the wild accusation. “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,” Dre’s lawyer said in a 2016 statement.)
Attempts to reach DeBlanc were not immediately successful Wednesday. In their own filings opposing Knight’s habeas petition, prosecutors pointed out that Knight’s plea deal was actually a global resolution of three criminal cases, meaning he was actually facing up to 100 years to life if he had been convicted as charged on all three.
One of the cases was a criminal threats case involving Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray. Prosecutors wrote in a filing last August that Knight had called and threatened Gray in August 2014, demanding financial compensation for the use of his likeness in the film. They said after the call, Knight allegedly threatened Gray over text. “I will see u in person … u have kids just like me so let’s play hardball,” one text read, according to prosecutors. “I’m from Bompton. I’m a Blood Criminal Street Gang Member from the city of Compton,” Knight purportedly wrote in another text, allegedly promising to “make sure” Gray and Dre “received your hugs.” In a footnote, prosecutors said “hugs” was street vernacular for physical violence.
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