Judge Ronald S. Coen sides with the prosecution's bail request after evaluating Knight's past criminal record.
Marion “Suge” Knight was charged with murder, attempted murder, and two counts of hit and run after running over two men in a Compton parking lot in January, and Los Angeles Judge Ronald S. Coen has officially sided with the prosecution in the rap mogul’s bail review. Coen set Knight’s bail at $25 million, and Knight collapsed moments after the ruling and was rushed to the hospital.
While surveillance footage recently released by celebrity news website TMZ shows Knight striking Terry Carter and Cle Slon in January, Knight’s legal team has been arguing in court that the former Death Row Records founder was struggling to get away from “three gangbangers.”
“Mr Knight was attacked,” Kinght’s attorney Matt Fletcher told the judge. “Their (prosecutors) argument literally is, ‘He should have sat there and gotten more f—cked up.'”
While Fletcher tried to argue that the prosecutors were trying to make Knight seem like a character on the hit series Empire who is “out there running all of these criminal enterprises,” the judge sided with the prosecution’s proposed $25 million bail due to the rap mogul’s past criminal record. Prosecutors provided nearly 300 pages of evidence and arguments, and cited police reports showing Knight’s links to robberies, assaults and battery. They claimed that his history makes him a flight risk, and suggested that he may try to intimidate or threaten witnesses against him if he’s allowed to go out on bail.
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors also gave the judge a police report from 2014, in which an unidentified person claimed that Knight threatened to attack former NWA members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube after discovering that Universal’s upcoming NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton used his likeness without compensating him.
After the hearing, Knight collapsed and was taken to the hospital, which Fletcher is suggesting is a result of Knight’s improper treatment in jail. Knight has been rushed to the hospital several times immediately before or after court hearings, and Fletcher complained Friday that even prisoners “at Guantanamo Bay are treated better.”
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