Knight’s Bid for Early Release Denied

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court on Wednesday denied rap music entrepreneur Marion “Suge” Knight a chance to gain an early release from prison.

Knight, 33, the owner of Beverly Hills-based Death Row Records, asked the state high court to review his nine-year prison sentence for a probation violation. The court, meeting privately in closed conference, decided instead to let stand a lower court ruling that left Knight’s 1996 sentence intact.

Former California Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian, who represented Knight on appeal, declined to comment after the court’s announcement. Prosecution sources have said Knight may have to serve another two to five years before being released, although another defense attorney previously said Knight could be freed for good behavior as early as next summer.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge decided in 1996 that Knight had violated his probation by kicking a man during a scuffle in a Las Vegas hotel. The former college football star had been on probation since 1995 after pleading no contest to two counts of assault.

The charges stemmed from a 1992 attack on two aspiring rappers in a Hollywood recording studio. Knight admitted that he used a gun during the attack, and he received a suspended nine-year prison sentence and fives years’ probation.

Earlier this year, a state Court of Appeal in Los Angeles ruled that Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger had acted properly in sending Knight to prison for nine years on the probation violation.

Supervising Deputy Atty. Gen. Steven D. Matthews said he was pleased that the high court let the appellate ruling stand. “I thought the Court of Appeal’s decision was sound and well-based, and based on the only reasonable interpretation of the facts,” he said.

Knight’s attorneys had argued that their client’s no-contest pleas in 1995 were involuntary because they were based on faulty promises by prosecutors. They argued that he should have been allowed to withdraw his pleas, making the terms of probation moot.

Knight, once the music industry’s most successful “gangsta” rap entrepreneur, founded Death Row in 1992 and built it into the nation’s top rap label. It was the first black-owned and operated rap label to dominate the pop charts consistently.

But sales eventually fell as the company’s legal problems grew. The label became the subject of a variety of ongoing criminal investigations and civil lawsuits, and its future is now clouded.

Earlier this week, an attorney for Knight said Los Angeles detectives have no evidence linking him to the slaying of rapper Notorious B.I.G. and accused them of falsely identifying Knight as a suspect in the murder case.

LAPD officials have refused to characterize the status of the probe into the March 1997 slaying. Detectives have searched Knight’s prison cell and the offices of Death Row Records.

Notorious B.I.G., 24, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was shot to death in a car as he prepared to leave a music industry party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.