Suge Knight sentence: Former rap mogul expected to get 28 years in prison after plea deal

Co-founder of Death Row Records entered a surprise plea deal with prosecutors in September

Suge Knight will be sentenced on 4 October (AP)

Former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight is expected to be sentenced to nearly three decades in prison today (Thursday 4 October), almost four years after he killed one man and injured another with his truck outside a burger stand in Compton.

The 53-year-old co-founder of Death Row Records struck a surprise plea deal with prosecutors on 20 September, just days before he was set to stand trial for murder and attempted murder.

He instead pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter, and agreed to a prison sentence of 28 years.

Knight, who is considered as one of the most important figures in hip hop, is responsible for releasing pivotal records by artists such as Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur.

He co-founded Death Row Records with Dr Dre after the rapper said he wanted to leave NWA and their label Ruthless. The duo set up Death Row in 1991, going on to release one of west coast rap's defining records: Dr Dre's The Chronic.

At the height of his power in the mid 1990s, Knight signed Snoop Dogg and MC Hammer, with the former releasing his career-defining album Doggystyle in 1993 via Death Row. Meanwhile, Tupac signed in 1995 after Knight paid for his $1.4m bail (for a sexual assault charge), and teamed up with Dr Dre for the Joe Cocker-sampling hit "California Love".

A year later, Knight became embroiled in the feud between east and west coast rappers, which led to the drive-by shootings of killed Tupac in Las Vegas, 1996, and Notorious BIG in 1997. Knight, who was in the car when Tupac got shot, was accused of being involved in at least one of the murders.

In January 2015, years after losing control of Death Row when it was forced into bankruptcy, he got into a fight with his longtime rival, Cle "Bone" Sloan, a consultant on the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton.

Video surveillance footage captured the moment Knight backed his truck into Sloan outside a burger stand, before driving it into businessman Terry Carter, who died from his injuries. Knight's lawyers claimed it was an act of self-defence.

Knight's previous conviction and felonies triggered California's "three strikes" law, where voluntary manslaughter would usually have brought a sentence of 11 years in prison. This doubled the manslaughter sentence and added an extra six years.

The plea agreement cleared Knight in two other cases, from 2014 – one where he was accused of stealing a woman's camera, and another where he allegedly sent threatening messages to Straight Outta Compton director F Gary Gray.

Additional reporting by Associated Press