Rap music mogul Suge Knight released from jail

Jet, March 17, 2003

Marion "Suge" Knight, founder of the Death Row Records label, now known as Tha Row, recently was released from jail upon the ordering of a parole board.

The board dropped four of five charges against Knight, who had been in jail since a Dec. 23 arrest for allegedly associating with gang members, and gave him credit for the 61 days he's spent in Los Angeles County jail. One count of association with a known gang member, Tim McDonald, a security guard employed by Knight's record company, was upheld (JET, Jan. 20).

The 37-year-old rap mogul will be required to spend 200 hours of community service aimed at persuading kids to avoid gangs, said Bill Sessa, spokesman for the state Board of Prison Terms.

Knight remains on parole until April 2004.

"He's very relieved, but he's known that his conduct was not the type that should have sent him back to prison," Knight's lawyer, David Chesnoff, said after the hearing.

Under terms of his parole, Knight was allowed to associate only during work hours with McDonald, who's listed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as a known gang member. But Knight spent time with McDonald on several social occasions, Sessa said.

Sessa said he believes Knight will be effective at deterring teens from joining gangs. "He has a lot of influence," said Sessa. "We believe kids will take it very seriously because he is so well known and can talk from his own life experience."

Chesnoff said Knight already planned speaking engagements with kids to discourage them from joining gangs.

Knight was arrested seven years ago for violating his probation in connection with a fight in a Las Vegas casino that preceded the shooting death of rapper Tupac Shakur. Those violations resulted in a five-year prison sentence that ended in 2001.

He had been on probation since 1995 when he entered no-contest pleas to two counts of assault stemming from a 1992 attack on two rappers at a Hollywood recording studio.