Suge Knight is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for the killing of Terry Carter Jr. in 2015. Now, a lawyer representing Carter’s family has said that they should be paid $81 million in compensation for his death. A report by Rolling Stone noted that it was the first time attorney Lance Behringer put a number to Carter’s death during the month-long civil trial, which reached its closing arguments a week after Suge Knight testified via a video link from prison.
In 2018, Knight, the former CEO of Death Row Records, pleaded no contest to the voluntary manslaughter of Carter. The prosecution initially charged Knight with murder, arguing that he intentionally drove over Carter in the parking lot of Tam’s Burgers on January 29th, 2015. “Dying on the concrete floor alone at Tam’s Burgers was not a natural death,” he said, motioning toward Carter’s widow and his two daughters. “He was taken from these three women.”
Behringer went on to maintain that each family member should receive a million dollars for each year of the 27 years Terry Carter would have lived had Knight not killed him with his truck. “Nobody’s comfortable talking about money,” he added. “But that’s what we have to do.” David Kenner, Knight’s defence attorney, noted that his client regarded Carter as a close friend, adding that he was “devastated” by the incident, which he called “a tragic accident and a tragic loss of human life.”
Kenner then asked jurors to put imagine themselves sitting in the cab of Knight’s truck during the moment Cle ‘Bone’ Sloan allegedly attacked him. “Imagine somebody punching you, chasing you again, punching you again, pointing a gun at you, threatening to kill you,” he said. “You have to decide, what would you have done then?”
Kenner clarified that he wasn’t “challenging the worth of Mr. Carter’s life” – only those responsible. “With all due apologies to Ms. Carter and the Carter family, I ask that you render a verdict of not liable.” The Carter family filed the underlying lawsuit against Knight in June 2015. The original document named Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and NBC Universal among the defendants and maintained that they all knew Knight intended to commit violence on the set of Straight Outta Compton, where Carter was killed.
The family argue that the producers hired Sloan to stand up to Knight and then failed to “manage” his violence. Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and NBC Universal all successfully fought the complaint.
