The Notorious B.I.G. wrongful death case is all over--for now.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper declared a mistrial Wednesday, a day after she expressed grave concern that the Los Angeles Police Department may have purposely withheld evidence from the family of the slain rapper.
Lawyers for both sides confirmed the mistrial, which began June 21 and came to abrupt halt three days later, after an anonymous tipster called the plaintiffs' attorney, claiming the LAPD had been hiding key documents.
Cooper immediately halted proceedings. LAPD internal affairs investigators sifted through boxes of evidence, seizing recordings and transcripts relevant to the case. The Los Angeles City Attorney's Office also turned over dozens of "misplaced" documents.
On Tuesday, Cooper said she found it "very disturbing" that an LAPD detective failed to hand over notes about a prison informant who claimed rogue cops had a hand in the 1997 drive-by slaying of the rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace.
Cooper said that Detective Steven Katz's explanation that he forgot about the potentially crucial notes "defies credulity."
"It certainly looks to the court, at first blush, that this was a deliberate concealment of information," Cooper said. "Some sanction at this stage appears very appropriate."
The Wallace family had asked for either a mistrial or default judgment in its favor.
The family will now refile the case with a RICO claim of racketeering within the department and focus on the LAPD's Rampart scandal, in which corrupt cops were blamed for tainting several cases and then covering up the misconduct.
One of the key figures in Rampart was Rafael Perez. The anonymous tipster said that the previously hidden police documents would contain comments from a jailhouse snitch who claimed Perez confessed to killing Biggie after a music industry party in L.A.'s mid-Wilshire district on March 9, 1997.
The Wallace family, led by the rapper's mother, Voletta, and widow, Faith Evans, filed their federal civil rights and wrongful-death lawsuit against the LAPD three years ago, accusing the department of botching the investigation into the rapper's death to hide the fact that a rogue cop may have committed the crime.
Before the tip came, the family had been focusing its case on another disgraced officer, David Mack. The Wallaces' suit claimed Mack--acting on orders from Biggie rap rival Marion "Suge" Knight--arranged for the shooting in retaliation for the murder of Tupac Shakur six months earlier. Mack was originally named as a defendants in the lawsuit but was dropped before the trial began. Knight was never named in the suit and has never been criminally charged in connection to the murder, which remains unsolved.
During the first days of the trial, witnesses failed to establish any connection between Mack and the murder, but it was shown that the LAPD considered Knight their prime suspect.
Both Mack and Perez are both behind bars for other crimes. The former is serving a 14-year prison term for armed robbery, while the latter is locked up for his role in the LAPD's Rampart corruption scandal. Before the tip came, Perez hadn't been linked to the Biggie case and was not named in the family's complaint.
Assistant City Attorney Don Vincent, who has downplayed the botched evidence handling and the Wallace's hypothesis, told reporters Wednesday that he looked forward to another courtroom showdown so that he could "try the case on the merits."