LOS ANGELES (AP) – Former rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight and his lawyer discussed paying witnesses thousands of dollars to lie in his upcoming murder case, prosecutors said.
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 that asked a court to look into the issue.
Talk of bribery came in a series of recorded calls in 2015 between Knight, who was in jail, and his attorney Matthew Fletcher along with Knight’s fiancee and his business partner.
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, one of whom died, in 2015 outside a Compton burger stand after an argument on the set of the movie “Straight Outta Compton.”
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-defense.