Two attorneys who formerly represented Suge Knight have been arrested on accessory charges. Matthew Fletcher and Thaddeus Culpepper were arrested Thursday afternoon for allegedly acting as "accessories after the fact to a felony," Billboardreported Friday morning.
Fletcher was taken in at the Long Beach courthouse around 2 p.m. Thursday and held in lieu of a $1 million bail. According to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesperson, Culpepper was arrested at home around 5 p.m. The spokesperson did not offer additional details on either person's accessory charges, including whether the lawyers' accusations were connected with Knight's cases.
Both Fletcher and Culpepper previously represented Knight in his ongoing murder case. The Los Angeles Times, who first reported the story of their arrests late Thursday night, noted that prosecutors last year accused both attorneys of witness tampering and discussing bribes. The accusations, which also involved Knight, were later denied by Fletcher and Culpepper.
Prosecutors last year claimed to have a "series of recorded phone calls" in which Knight, Fletcher, and others were heard talking about paying off witnesses to support their self-defense argument. Culpepper is alleged to have agreed to pay an informant to say that he was present at the time Knight drove his truck into two men, one of whom died, and "witnessed evidence favorable to the defense." The incident is alleged to have occurred outside a Compton-area burger stand in 2015. In a separate case, Knight is accused of threatening director Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray.
