B.I.G. Judge Feeling Wronged

The ghost of Notorious B.I.G. continues to haunt the Los Angeles legal system.

The federal judge who ordered the City of Angels to pay the family of the slain rapper $1.1 million said Tuesday that she felt deceived by some of the evidence presented during the course of the family's wrongful death lawsuit last year.

Lawyers representing the city of Los Angeles have shown U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper a four-page report dating back to November 2002 prepared by an investigator whom the family hired to explore possible connections between rogue LAPD officers and Notorious B.I.G.'s death in 1997.

The documents detail an interview between the investigator and a jailhouse informant who claimed to have inside info linking the killing of the Life After Death rapper to ex-LAPD officers Rafael Perez and David A. Mack. (Perez was named as a key figure in the L.A.-area Rampart corruption scandal. Both are currently in prison--Perez for Rampart-related activities, Mack for armed robbery.)

In turn, Judge Cooper has demanded that attorney Perry R. Sanders Jr.--who during the wrongful death trial asserted that the family knew nothing about those officers' alleged involvement--explain himself. Now.

Judge Cooper declared a mistrial in July after determining that the LAPD had failed to disclose key statements linking the killing to Perez and Mack. An anonymous "concerned citizen" had phoned in the tip.

Sanders stated last year that the supposed cover-up made it impossible for the family to properly prepare for trial. Judge Cooper then ordered the city of Los Angeles to shell out the $1.1 million to cover the family's attorney fees and costs in return for withholding evidence.

The family of Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, had alleged from the beginning that LAPD officers carried out the killing on orders of Death Row Records founder Marion "Suge" Knight in retribution for the killing of Tupac Shakur six months beforehand.

Now it turns out that the plaintiffs may have known what the LAPD knew as early as 2002. Judge Cooper said in court that she felt "absolutely outraged" after reading the report.

"I believe you have absolutely deceived this court into believing that you knew nothing about this," she told Sanders Tuesday by teleconference. "What I don't understand is, how could you have received this report...and then carried on before this court as if a bombshell had just been dropped in your lap."

He responded by saying that he had given the aforementioned documents describing the jailhouse interview to the city before the civil trial began.

"We made our entire file 100 percent accessible [to police], not in an attempt to file a lawsuit, but in an attempt to solve a murder," Sanders told the Los Angeles Times.

Vincent Marella, a private lawyer representing the city, accused Sanders in court of putting on a "drama of outrage." He quoted a court transcript from last summer that had Sanders saying he had "certainly never seen anything like" the info that reared its ugly head this week.

According to the L.A. City News Service, the report handed over to the judge also details which police detectives the informant talked to in acquiring his info.

Judge Cooper ordered Sanders to prepare a written response to the matter and stated that she's not currently leaning toward allowing Notorious B.I.G.'s family to file a revised lawsuit as they had planned. A month after the mistrial, the family attempted to settle outside of court for $18 million, but the L.A. City Council refused the deal. The council did, however, approve the $1.1 million payday in March.

"This might be the time to settle this case," the judge said.

Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down May 9, 1997. His killing remains unsolved.