Drug possession charge against rapper Kodak Black dismissed in Florida

Kodak Black arrives at the MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum, Aug. 27, 2017, in Inglewood, California. A drug possession charge against the South Florida rapper was dismissed Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, two months after an arrest, though a drug trafficking case from 2022 remains ongoing. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida—A drug possession charge against South Florida rapper Kodak Black was dismissed Friday, Feb. 9, two months after an arrest, though a drug trafficking case from 2022 remains ongoing.

Broward County Circuit Judge Barbara Duffy ruled that prosecutors could not refute or negate the fact that the rapper, whose real name is Bill Kapri, had an oxycodone prescription filled by a pharmacy, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Plantation police arrested Kapri in December after finding him asleep at the wheel with white powder around his mouth, officials said. The powder initially tested positive for cocaine, but a lab test later revealed it was oxycodone, for which Kapri obtained a prescription in July 2022.

Kapri still faces a tampering with evidence charge related to the arrest, but his attorney, Bradford Cohen, hopes to get that dismissed, as well. Kapri has been in a Miami federal detention center since his arrest, which caused his bond to be revoked in a separate case. Cohen hopes the drug charge being dismissed will prompt a federal judge to free Kapri.

Kapri was arrested in 2022 on charges of trafficking in oxycodone and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription. He was freed on bond with regular drug testing as a condition of his release. Kapri was ordered to drug rehab for 30 days early last year after missing a drug test in February and then testing positive for fentanyl several days later, according to court records. Then last June, a warrant for his arrest was issued after authorities said he did not show up for a drug test.

In January 2021, then-President Donald Trump commuted a three-year federal prison sentence the rapper had for falsifying documents used to buy weapons. Kapri had served about half his sentence.

As Kodak Black, Kapri has sold more than 30 million singles, with massive hits such as “Super Gremlin,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022.