Suge Knight, president of Death Row Records, sentenced to nine years in prison for probation violation

Jet, March 17, 1997

Marion "Suge" Knight, owner of the Los Angeles-based Death Row Records, the nation's largest rap label, recently was sentenced to nine years in prison for probation violation.

Knight, 31, had been on probation stemming from a 1992 incident in which he pleaded no contest to assaulting aspiring musicians at a Hollywood studio. He was given five years probation, and he is already serving three years of federal probation for a weapons violation in Las Vegas.

The Los Angeles Times reported that a nine-year sentence generally means about four and a half years in jail. Knight has already served almost a year.

Under California law, an inmate can't run a business from jail. Knight can assign authority to someone else while he's incarcerated.