{"id":111359,"date":"2017-08-11T00:05:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T04:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=111359"},"modified":"2017-08-11T00:05:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T04:05:32","slug":"prosecutors-suge-knight-lawyer-discussed-witness-bribery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/08\/11\/prosecutors-suge-knight-lawyer-discussed-witness-bribery\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutors: ‘Suge’ Knight, lawyer discussed witness bribery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Suge<\/a>
Suge Knight (Photo: marionsugeknight\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LOS ANGELES \u2014 Former rap mogul Marion \u201cSuge\u201d Knight and his lawyer discussed paying witnesses thousands of dollars to lie in his upcoming murder case, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office made the allegation and released transcripts of the discussions during phone calls in a filing made public Thursday asking a court to look into the issue.<\/p>\n

Talk of bribery came in a series of recorded calls in 2015 between Knight, who was in jail, his attorney Matthew Fletcher along with Knight’s fiancee and his business partner.<\/p>\n

Knight, whose Death Row Records made household names of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur, is charged with running his truck into two men in 2015 outside a Compton burger stand after an argument on the set of the movie \u201cStraight Outta Compton.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people on the calls discuss payments of as much as $25,000 to witnesses to say the victims or others at the burger stand were armed at the time, bolstering Knight’s argument that he was acting in self-defence when he ran into the men.<\/p>\n

Fletcher did not immediately return a phone message left by The Associated Press, but strongly denied bribing anyone to The New York Daily News.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve never paid anyone, period, end of story,\u201d Fletcher told the Daily News, which first reported on the bribery allegations. \u201cI don’t believe Suge Knight has the money to pay anyone.<\/p>\n

In one call, Fletcher appeared to discuss giving money to bikers who were at the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ll pay anything … if we can get the two or three versions from the bikers on tape and we can get (recording interrupts) we’re done,\u201d Fletcher says. \u201cIt’s going home time. Right? That’s a fair … investment, you know, 20, 25 thousand dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fletcher told the Daily News he wasn’t talking about witnesses, but bikers who may have cellphone video that could be useful to the defence.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff’s Department was tipped off that Knight and others were discussing witness tampering, and requested a warrant to listen in on the calls, the filing said.<\/p>\n

A judge found that the calls could be recorded and would not violate confidentiality rules if Knight was first speaking to a third party and his lawyer was then conferenced in.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said they were not yet asking that Fletcher be removed from the case, and did not say they intended to file chargers, only that they wanted a court inquiry to see if Fletcher through the illegal activity might be conflicted as Knight’s lawyer.<\/p>\n

The filing also alleges that Fletcher encouraged the sale of surveillance video from the scene to TMZ in violation of a court order, which Fletcher also denies.<\/p>\n

Last week, Knight pleaded not guilty to new charges that he threated to kill or seriously injure \u201cStraight Outta Compton\u201d director F. Gary Gray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2014 Former rap mogul Marion \u201cSuge\u201d Knight and his lawyer discussed paying witnesses thousands of dollars to lie …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":111366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[21008],"class_list":["post-111359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-marion-suge-knight","mauthors-andrew-dalton","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}