Rapper Kidd Creole was found guilty of manslaughter Wednesday in the 2017 stabbing death of a homeless man during an argument in Manhattan.
The 61-year-old hip-hop pioneer, whose real name is Nathaniel Glover, put his head down and closed his eyes as the verdict was read in Manhattan Supreme Court — just about three hours after the jury began deliberating.
He told his lawyer to get home safely and thanked the judge before being led from the courtroom.
Earlier on Wednesday, Glover’s defense attorney claimed that doctors at Bellevue Hospital — and not the rapper — were responsible for the death of vagrant John Jolly.
“Those stabbings did not cause his death,” lawyer Scottie Celestin told the jurors during closing arguments. “I believe the hospital killed this man.”
He added: “They killed this man, and they’re trying to protect the hospital.”
Glover, a former member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, allegedly stabbed Jolly to death during a dispute in Midtown.
Celestin claimed during the trial that Glover acted in self-defense and that the stab wounds were not life-threatening.
He previously blamed 55-year-old Jolly’s death on a mix of alcohol and the sedative Versed, which was given to him at the hospital because he was being combative with emergency workers.
The victim’s cousin called the claim “baloney.”
“OK, [Glover] is a celebrity, but he committed a crime,” Cheryl Horry, 53, said outside the courthouse.
“It was murder. He could have kept on walking, and my cousin would still be alive,” Horry added. “My cousin liked to drink but he was a sweetheart.”
Prosecutor Mark Dahl agreed, calling Celestin’s claim “absurd.”
“He kept trying to isolate little aspects of Mr. Jolly’s condition to say that was indicative of his condition on the whole,” Dahl told jurors during his summation. “It’s like if you totaled your car and the insurance assessor says, ‘the back right safety belt still operates.’ That doesn’t reflect whether the car was on fire.
“The defense slanders the very people who attempted to save Mr. Jolly’s life,” he said.
In a statement announcing the conviction, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Glover “committed a shocking act of violence.
“This conviction makes clear my Office will hold people who commit violent crime accountable to the full extent of the law,” Bragg said.
Glover is expected to be sentenced on May 4.
