Suge Knight’s Lawyer Claims Dr. Dre And Deputy Sheriff Conspired To Get Him Killed

Record producer Suge Knight’s lawyer Thaddeus Culpepper filed new papers in the court alleging that a sheriff’s deputy let a shooter inside 1OAK in West Hollywood, California, in August 2014, allowing the shooter to put seven bullets into Knight, New York Daily News exclusively reported, citing documents filed Friday. Culpepper also said that the shooter confessed that rap mogul Dr. Dre paid him and a friend $50,000 for the hit at a pre-VMA party hosted by Chris Brown.

In the documents, Culpepper argued that Knight was being held without phone, mail or visitor privileges to prevent him from “connecting” his pending murder case from 2015 and the shooting that occurred at the nightclub. According to the filing, the sheriff’s detective investigating Knight for the murder case also worked at 1OAK and had said earlier that a man named “Tee-Money” had confessed that he was one of the shooters inside the club, New York Daily News reported.

Culpepper’s motion added that the same detective “informed Knight that the gunman stated that Dr. Dre paid him and a friend $50,000 to kill Knight.”

Knight has been charged with murder and attempted murder after running over two men with his truck in Compton, California, in January last year. He had turned himself over to the authorities after the incident. Orders, which were kept secret, had barred him from communicating with anyone other than his lawyers. With his filing, Culpepper is attempting to unseal those orders.

Culpepper said in the filing that the off-duty sheriff “was seen on video letting the gunmen in the front door of 1OAK,” and he was later seen at the Los Angeles International Airport helping the gunman flee the country. The New York Daily News report added that authorities “inexplicably released Tee-Money.”

Knight was reportedly shot at the place six times but still managed to walk outside and get help. The filing has so far not mentioned a motive for Dr. Dre to get Knight killed.

Knight had pleaded not guilty to the charges in the 2015 case, and said that he was a victim to an armed assault and was running for his life when he ran over Terry Carter and Cle (Bone) Sloan. Carter had died in the incident.

Culpepper’s filing also said that investigators used a jailhouse informant named Danny Timms and wanted him to “lie and state that Knight confessed that he intended to run over Carter.”

The lawyer reportedly said it would be “impossible at this juncture to assess the veracity of the statements” included in his filing but argued that Knight’s constitutional rights as a pre-trial detainee were being violated. “The supervising judge and two superior court judges worked in concert to violate these rules and several others to defraud defendant Marion (Suge) Knight of his United States and California constitutional rights,” he added.

Dr. Dre has not yet responded to the allegations while a spokeswoman for the District Attorney and the Sheriff’s Department also did not respond to a request for comment by New York Daily News.