Armed guards at Drake's Beverly Hills mansion thwart subpoena servers in XXXTentacion trial
Armed guards at Drake's Beverly Hills mansion thwart subpoena servers in XXXTentacion trial
The global superstar is supposed to sit for a video deposition on Friday, but lawyers say he's not cooperating and his staff won't accept a subpoena on his behalf.
Armed guards at Drake's Beverly Hills mansion thwart subpoena servers in XXXTentacion trial
A lawyer for one of the men accused of murdering Florida rapper XXXTentacion is asking a judge to order Drake to sit for a deposition this Friday or face contempt charges.
James Baird, a registered process server in California, says armed guards refused to accept the subpoena when he arrived at the superstar rapper’s Beverly Hills mansion on Valentine’s Day about 2:30 p.m.
Baird’s associate cited his own fandom of Drake when trying to appease the guards, saying, “by the way, I like Drake,” but they didn’t change their stance.
“I am not accepting anything,” one said.
The exchange is chronicled in a motion filed Friday by Mauricio Padilla, a Miami-based lawyer who represents murder defendant Dedrick Williams and has implied in trial that Drake was involved in XXXTentacion’s murder.
“Apparently, Drake’s staff believes that physically kicking the subpoena is a legally sound way of refusing service,” according to the motion.
Williams, Michael Boatwright and Trayvon Newsome are charged in the fatal shooting of 20-year-old XXXTentacion, legal name Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy, who was gunned down on June 18, 2018, as he left RIVA Motorsports dealership in Deerfield Beach, Florida.
Surveillance video played repeatedly in trial shows an SUV block XXXTentacion’s BMW as it tries to leave the dealership, then two masked men emerge and fire into the car, leaving with a Louis Vuitton bag with $50,000 that XXXTentacion had with him.
A fourth defendant, Robert Allen, took a plea deal for second-degree murder. He testified against the men and denied any connection to Drake. But XXXTentacion and Drake had a feud, and XXXTentacion once posted on Instagram, “If anybody kills me, it’s Drake,” so Padilla has seized on the lack of investigation into Drake when pushing the classic defense narrative that investigators rushed to judgment and didn’t explore all angles when trying to find XXXTentacion’s killers.
Padilla mentioned XXXTentacion’s Instagram story about Drake in his Feb. 7 opening statement, and he told jurors that someone wanted XXXTentacion to have extra security because of threats from Drake and Migos (Offset, Quavo and the late Takeoff’s group).
Padilla initially secured a ruling from Broward County Circuit Judge Michael Usan on Feb. 8 that ordered Drake to sit for a deposition via Zoom on Feb. 24 - this coming Friday - at 5 p.m. Eastern time, or appear before the judge the following Monday “so the court can determine why he should not be held in contempt.”
Drake hired a lawyer in Florida who persuaded Judge Usan to vacate the order, but the judge did so after explaining that the attorneys needed to work together to figure out a way for Drake to be deposed.
To be clear: A deposition is not courtroom testimony. Drake would not be testifying in court in front of the jury. Instead, his deposition would be taken via a secure video link, and possibly sealed from the public case file if the judge allows it. Depositions can be used in trials, but that won’t necessarily happen here.
Padilla obviously wants to explore whatever issues he can with Drake in the deposition in hopes of bolstering an argument that he should be called as a witness, or in hopes of obtaining deposition testimony he can then argue should be shown to the jury.
He said in his Jan. 26 motion to take Drake’s deposition that Judge Usan said if the depo is taken “with the same vigorous examination that one would have at trial” it can be played in trial should Drake be unavailable to testify in person.
But none of that can happen until Drake actually sits for the deposition, and after the Valentine’s Day showdown in Beverly Hills, Padilla is asking Judge Usan to reinstate his Feb. 8 order and again threaten Drake with contempt if he doesn’t sit for a video deposition on Friday.
Padilla included with his filing video of the altercation between Baird and Drake’s security. He quoted from it in his motion and included an email from Drake’s lawyer Bradford Cohen in which Cohen said he nor anyone else can accept a subpoena on behalf of Drake and warned of a looming attorney fee request should he have to legally fight an attempt.
Padilla called Cohen’s response “the metaphorical equivalent to kicking the subpoena down the driveway.”
“The email sent by Mr. Cohen, coupled with Drake’s staff flagrantly refusing the subpoena and playing kickball with the document is indicative that the February 24th, 2023 deposition will not occur,” according to Padilla’s motion. “Considering the expedited necessity of the deposition to ensure the defendant’s constitutional rights to a proper defense, undersigned request the court enter an order requiring the deposition take place or that Aubrey Drake Graham be held in contempt.”
He added that Cohen and Drake’s security’s behavior “shows a complete disregard for the professional courtesy extended to Mr. Graham and his counsel.”
It all means Drake’s Friday deposition is very much up in the air, because he’s not cooperating and no subpoena has officially been accepted on his behalf.
“The defendant requires the deposition and despite the court denying the motion to perpetuate the court has always been clear that this deposition should take place,” Padilla said.
Read the full 41-page filing here.
I expect Judge Usan will address this Tuesday morning. (Law & Crime Network is streaming the entire trial here.)
I’ve watched some of it here and there, and the Drake issue definitely seems like one of those things defense attorneys get all hand flappy over when the jury isn’t around, then when the jury’s in all the Drake stuff just falls totally flat and sounds like a giant distraction.
I saw Allen's testimony in which he implicated the defendants and denied any connection to Drake or anyone who knows him. I also saw really creepy testimony from a guy who asked XXXTentacion for a picture at RIVA Motorsports, but XXXTentacion refused.
The rapper was shot to death moments later, and the guy who asked for the picture saw the whole thing. Under questioning from the prosecutor, he admitted to actually going up to XXXTentacion’s BMW after the shooting, looking at him and seeing he was dead, then taking a photo of him and uploading it to the Internet.
Pretty horrifying stuff, but the guy reluctantly and sullenly admitted he shouldn’t have done it and also agreed with the prosecutor that he'd willingly stayed at the scene and cooperated with investigators.
But then in cross-examination, one of the defense attorneys seemed to imply that the guy is somehow involved in the murder of XXXTentacion, as in he was upset about the rapper turning down his photo request so he arranged a hit within seconds?
The lawyer of course was not that specific; he just kind of threw out a couple questions that implied a possible connection.
For me, it exemplifies how the defense in this three-defendant trial seems to be all over the place. You have three attorneys for three defendants, and they don’t seem to be totally in line with each other’s narratives.
So while the Drake subpoena issue is fun to follow, I don’t think it’s as relevant to the actual murder case as Padilla likes to think. But we’ll see what happens if Drake actually does sit for this deposition. (Cohen wrote in his motion to quash the subpoena that the intent of taking Drake’s testimony “is less for the purpose of discovering relevant evidence and testimony, but instead add more layers of celebrity and notoriety to a tragic and unfortunate event.”)
Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Drake’s lawyer is asking the judge to strike the new motion over his deposition and sanction Padilla for filing it. (Though he’s pointing to the fact that Drake hasn’t been properly served, when the point of the motion argues Drake’s people are dodging service.)
The new filing from Cohen says Padilla only filed the motion “to inject celebrity spectacle into an otherwise routine trial and generate headlines in the news.”
Notably, Cohen is not saying Drake won’t sit for the deposition. He’s saying Padilla’s motion to force the deposition is unnecessary, and he’s blaming Padilla for being frustrated over problems properly serving the subpoena. He’s also saying contempt shouldn’t be considered because the scheduled deposition is still days away. Read the full filing here.
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Who wanted X to bring security because of Drake? Padilla must be talking about X’s mom, Cleopatra, who supposedly sent X’s unarmed step-uncle along for the ride to the bank.
I’m gonna watch this so close. It explains why he’s been quite lately. I know XXX had beef with Drake and often times felt threatened by him. But it’s also hard to believe Drake (as successful as he is) would stoop so low to have him killed. We shall see