A Broward judge dismissed the final charge in a drug possession case against Kodak Black Wednesday, the conclusion of a legal saga that at one point left the South Florida rapper in prison for two months.
Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, had faced two criminal charges, one count of possession of oxycodone and one count of tampering with physical evidence after a traffic stop in Plantation last December.
Police officers had found him asleep at the wheel, his car parked in the road, according to a probable cause affidavit. When an officer looked back at Black while checking his license and registration, he saw the rapper with white powder in his mouth, which a lab test incorrectly identified as cocaine, and which later tested positive for oxycodone.
Broward County Circuit Court Judge Barbara Duffy had granted a motion to dismiss on the drug possession charge in February, writing that prosecutors’ arguments did not successfully “refute or negate” Black having a prescription for the drug.
On Wednesday, she dismissed the tampering with evidence charge, writing that Black did not destroy the evidence by putting the oxycodone in his mouth, and that prosecutors did not show sufficient evidence to the contrary. Police officers retrieved the oxycodone on and around Black and put it into evidence, she said.
“Under the State’s best evidence, the Defendant attempted to alter or destroy evidence but was unsuccessful,” Duffy wrote.
The case is now entirely dismissed except for a traffic infraction. Police officers said Black’s car was stopped in the road, a violation of Florida law, which had given them probable cause for the original traffic stop.
The charges “should have never been filed or brought by the Broward State Atty Office,” Black’s attorney, Bradford Cohen, wrote on Instagram Wednesday night. “We showed them his script prior to filing, and they decided to file anyway … That case is now completely dismissed.”
The Broward State Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the charges being dropped.
Black still faces charges of trafficking in oxycodone in a 2022 case as well as a federal gun purchasing case. His latest case caused his bond to be revoked in the federal case, sending him to a detention center in Miami for about two months.