Notorious B.I.G.’s murder remains unresolved, and rightfully so, his family has never let L.A officials live it down; but the final buzzer may have sounded.
Christopher Wallace, also known as Biggie Smalls, was gunned down outside the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, while leaving a music industry party. The criminal investigation surrounding Wallace’s murder has remained open for all those years, but a federal judge has determined that enough is enough.
The judge has dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the rapper’s mother, Voletta Wallace, which was first filed in 2002. He had already declared a mistrial in 2005 after attorneys for Wallace’s family discovered the city had withheld a trove of LAPD documents. Based on those findings, the judge then handling the case ordered the city to pay Wallace’s family $1.1 million in January 2006.
Marion “Suge” Knight was accused in the lawsuit of ordering Wallace’s killing. Several of the officers named in the lawsuit were key players in Los Angeles’ Rampart Division scandal, which exposed police corruption.
The sizable suit was dismissed “without prejudice,” which means the case can be refiled at a later date. Sounding an optimistic tone, Bradley C. Gage, a lawyer for the rapper’s estate, said that the dismissal could pave the way for arrests to be made in the case. “I think that this is an important case,” Gage said. “It’s important because it can help to protect society. It’s important to show areas where the police department would seem to have failed some of its obligations to its citizens.” –ramone mack
