Suge Knight is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for the 2015 killing of Terry Carter Jr. On Tuesday (June 14), a lawyer representing Carter’s family told a Los Angeles courtroom they should be paid $81 million for his wrongful death.
According to Rolling Stone,it was the first time attorney Lance Behringer put a dollar amount on the Carter family’s loss during the nearly month-long wrongful death civil trial. The trial reached it closing arguments a week after Suge Knight reportedly testified by video.
The 57-year-old former CEO of Death Row Records pleaded no contest to the voluntary manslaughter of Carter in 2018. Behringer reminded the court of the day Knight showed up to the set of Straight Outta Compton in an attempt to “cool tensions” after Knight was turned away from the production base camp.
“Dying on the concrete floor alone at Tam’s Burgers was not a natural death,” he said, motioning toward Carter’s widow and his two daughters. “He was taken from these three women.”
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Behringer maintained each woman should receive a million dollars for each of the 27 years Terry Carter likely would’ve lived had Knight not crushed him with his truck. He added, “Nobody’s comfortable talking about money. But that’s what we have to do.”
Knight’s defense attorney David Kenner noted his client considered Carter a friend and was “devastated” by the fatal incident, calling it “a tragic accident and a tragic loss of human life.”
Kenner then asked jurors to put themselves in the cab of Knight’s truck during the 30 seconds in which Cle “Bone” Sloan allegedly attacked him twice. “Imagine somebody punching you, chasing you again, punching you again, pointing a gun at you, threatening to kill you,” he said. “You have to decide, what would you have done then.”
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Kenner argued he isn’t “challenging the worth of Mr. Carter’s life” — just who’s responsible: “With all due apologies to Ms. Carter and the Carter family, I ask that you render a verdict of not liable.”
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The Carter family filed the underlying lawsuit in June 2015. The original complaint named Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and NBC Universal among the defendants, claiming they all knew Knight objected to Straight Outta Compton and intended to commit violence on the movie’s sets. The family thinks the producers hired Sloan to stand up to Knight’s violence and then failed to “manage” him. Dre, Ice Cube and NBC Universal successfully fought the complaint.
