Why has Suge Knight been in jail since 2015?
Suge Knight’s reputation for violence and criminality has been infamous ever since he emerged as a significant hip hop player in the early ’90s, but it only truly caught up with the Death Row Records founder decades later, in 2018, when he was sentenced to 28 long years behind bars.
Suge had previously experienced troubles with the law, spending years in jail here and there for offences like assault and breaking parole, but it was the 2018 conviction that was the big one, with a sentence of nearly three decades being thrust upon him. Aged 61 today, and with 20 years still remaining on that sentence, there’s a strong possibility he’ll never taste freedom again.
The conviction relates to a hit-and-run incident that took place in January 2015, during the production of the Straight Outta Compton movie. An argument reportedly broke out between Suge and two men on the set, with witnesses claiming that Suge, in the wake of the dispute, then followed the men in his car. They were Terry Carter and Cle Sloan.
Suge, according to the witnesses, pursued Carter and Sloan to a burger stand in a parking lot, where he proceeded to slam into them with his car. He drove away from the scene, with Carter dying from the collision and Sloan being left with ankle and head injuries.
Witnesses stated that Suge’s actions had seemed intentional, while the record boss himself argued that he’d been acting in self-defence.
The murder trial that ultimately led to Suge’s sentence was a chaotic one. He reshuffled his legal team a head-spinning number of times, with his attorney by the day of sentencing reportedly being his 16th. He even tried to fire this one at one stage, too, but he was stuck with him by the end.
As well as the constant changes in his legal team, Suge’s health issues were also very disruptive throughout the trial. He collapsed during one hearing, while he was hospitalised for blood clots in March 2017, and his ill health served to delay the trial.
Judgement day finally arrived in September 2018, when he pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and was handed his 28-year sentence. 22 of those years were for running over his victim, but the extra six were added because this crime represented Suge’s third strike under California’s three-strikes law.
He won’t be eligible for parole until 2034, but he has been keeping busy in jail, with a new memoir, Your Pain Is My Joy, set to be published later this year. It is set to touch upon Tupac Shakur’s murder and Suge’s infamous dispute with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, among other subjects.