Former attorneys for Suge Knight facing felony charges

Two of Suge Knight’s former attorneys have been arrested on charges that they were “accessories after the fact,” which comes out of Knight’s murder trial. According to media sources, Thaddeus Culpepper and Matthew Fletcher were arrested on Jan. 26, just five months after prosecutors first accused the two of bribing witnesses in order to help secure a not guilty verdict for Knight for his trial for the murder of Terry Carter. Both have denied the charges. In August, prosecutors presented a 22-page filing detailing how Knight, Fletcher, Knight’s fiancée Toi-Lin Kelly and business partner Mark Blankenship “had an understanding that they were going to assist the defendant in procuring witnesses for his defense, which included payments for fabricated testimony,” reports Rolling Stone.  In a recorded prison conversation, Fletcher allegedly discussed paying people to act as “witnesses” during Knight’s trial; the crux of Knight’s defense is that the mogul saw someone brandish a gun outside the “Straight Outta Compton” promotional shoot in January 2015, potentially rendering Knight’s hit-and-run murder of Carter into an act of self-defense. “I’ll pay anything … if we can get the two or three versions from the bikers on tape,” Fletcher said in the prison conversation. “It’s going home time. Right? That’s a fair motherking investment, you know, 20, 25 thousand dollars to pay to these motherkers to get home.” Prosecutors allege Fletcher was discussing witness tampering, while the lawyer previously stated he was talking about purchasing video from bikers that had corroborating evidence to the gun theory. Prosecutors also accused Fletcher of leaking sealed surveillance video of Knight’s truck running over two men – Carter and Cle “Bone” Sloan,” allegedly Knight’s initial target, to TMZ. While Fletcher denied the accusations – the video appeared on TMZ one day after he took on Knight as a client – both Kelly and Blankenship faced charges for selling the video to TMZ for $55,000. Prosecutors claimed in the August filing that Culpepper approached a sheriff’s department informant offering to pay for testimony that the informant witnessed the Carter murder and would further Knight’s alibi, reported the Associated Press.