Suge Knight’s legal trouble seemingly never ends. He is, of course, currently facing murder charges for allegedly running over two men in a 2015 incident that was caught on camera. Last week it was reported that he was indicted on charges that he threatened to kill Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray in a semi-related incident, and would be arraigned soon. Suge has publicly claimed innocence in both instances, and now he is being accused of another unlawful act: bribing witnesses.
The Los Angeles Times released a report on Thursday claiming Suge and his attorney Matthew Fletcher had conspired to pay off witnesses to testify in his defense and even fabricate stories to help him in court as he tries to beat the murder case. The Times cited a 22-page court filing by prosecutors that claims that transcribed conversations between Knight, Fletcher and ‘two others show the group “had an understanding that they were going to assist the defendant in procuring witnesses for his defense, which included payments for fabricated testimony.'”
None of the people involved with the alleged witness tampering have been charged with any crimes, instead the district attorney is asking the court to “conduct its own inquiry into whether Fletcher has a conflict of interest in representing Knight, in part, because investigators have ‘gathered evidence of possible witness tampering, bribery, conspiracy to violate a court order and obstruction of justice on the part of attorney Fletcher.'”
The testimony in question would apparently be witnesses claiming that the victims in the case were armed on the day in question and during the incident. The accusations of tampering stem from conversations Suge had with his lawyers and other members of his team where they discussed witnesses and the possibility of paying them for their testimony. Whether the notion was they would be paying the witnesses to lie is unclear, because the prosecution noted in the court filing that they believed “the witnesses being discussed would be procured by ‘legitimate’ means and that they would just ‘tell the truth.’”
