Kodak Black Found Guilty On Various Charges
A judge has found rapper Kodak Black guilty on five of six counts of violating the terms of his house arrest.
But any decision as to whether the rapper would face further, if any, jail time would have to wait until another hearing on May 4.
The 19-year-old Pompano Beach native, whose given name is Dieuson Octave, will remain in custody until at least that hearing.
Judge Michael Lynch found that Octave violated his house arrest by failing to complete a court-mandated anger management program, as well as by going without authorization to Club Lexx, a Miami-Dade strip club, and to a boxing match in Ohio.
The judge also found that Octave failed to abide by another condition, that he not violate the law, in connection with the allegations made by a Club Lexx bartender that he assaulted her.
The case hasn’t resulted in any charges, and was still open, a Miami-Dade police detective testified Wednesday, adding that the accuser, Jennifer Cunningham, has yet to appear at the police station to meet with her.
“Her case is still open because she hasn’t come in to speak to me,” Det. D.D. Rollins said.
But Rollins said it’s not uncommon for accusers in battery cases to be reluctant to cooperate, and as a result, the case sits dormant.
Cunningham’s testified in the hearing on April 21. She acknowledged she was looking at filing a civil suit.
But she said she also wanted justice for what she said was Octave punching and kicking her at the club when he had climbed on to the bar, and she had asked him to get down.
But subsequent witnesses, including several employees from the club, say no such assault happened.
Because this was a probation violation hearing, there was no requirement for a jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in the assault allegations.
The state wants Octave sent to prison for a maximum eight years. They described his conduct as a “slap in the face” to the justice system that gave him a second chance in the summer of 2016 by resolving charges he was then facing with a year of house arrest and five years of probation.
He had been facing potentially decades in prison.
“The state’s going to argue that he’s been given chance after chance,” Hough said.
“This was a gift to him,” she said of his house arrest. “This was his alternative to jail.”
His lawyers want him released. They argue that the time he’s already spent in jail since his arrest on Feb. 28 — almost 60 days — is enough for what they had argued weren’t intentional violations on the part of their client.
On social media, the rapper’s fans have been clamoring to know how long Kodak Black will be behind bars.
The answer is that he could be facing anything from time served, which could see him released, to several years.
That decision will be up to the judge.
Outside court, his lawyer Gary Kollin said they would appeal.
It was a difficult turn of events for Octave’s family and friends. After the ruling came down, the court recessed for a few minutes while Octave’s lawyers mulled whether or not to resume or come back another day. They opted for the latter, and the hearing was set for May 4 at 1:30 p.m.
In the hallway outside the courtroom afterward, Octave’s mother, Marcelene Octave, was hysterical, screaming “My son!”
Sitting in the nearly empty courtroom, Octave could hear his mother’s anguish. He sat silently, staring ahead.
It was the third day of his final violation of probation hearing. Things got bizarre, and downright funny, with several ‘did he just say that?’ moments.
Two employees of the strip club, a manager and supervisor of security, testified on Wednesday that Cunningham was drunk that night and grabbed Octave’s genitals.
The security guard, Dexter Burney, known at the club as “Big Country,” used colorful terms to describe what he said was Cunningham’s boast about grabbing Octave’s genitals.
“She told me she grabbed his meat,” he said.
Laughter, as well as gasps, rippled through the packed courtroom.
Hough would later say in her closing arguments that there was no evidence to corroborate the allegation Cunningham grabbed Octave.
At another point, Burney was asked by Hough if he was being compensated for his testimony.
"Once you give me my Popeye's, that's my compensation,” he said, referring to the paid meal he’d been promised for having waited so long to testify.
Octave, who grew up in Pompano Beach’s Golden Acres public housing development, was taken into custody during a court hearing on Feb. 28 and has remained in the Broward Main Jail without bond ever since.
Meanwhile, his debut album for Atlantic Records, “Painting Pictures,” released March 31, peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart while he was behind bars. The record has since fallen to the No. 13 spot.
