Entertainment & Sports
Jul. 24, 2002
Notorious B.I.G.'s Wrongful Death Suit Could Be on Road to Nowhere
Colum Garry Abrams - It's back to the drawing board in the federal wrongful death suit brought by the estate of New York rap music impresario Christopher G.L. Wallace, also known by his performing name, Notorious B.I.G., against the city of Los Angeles.
It's back to the drawing board in the federal wrongful death suit brought by the estate of New York rap music impresario Christopher G.L. Wallace, also known by his performing name, Notorious B.I.G., against the city of Los Angeles.
At a hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper gave attorneys for the Wallace estate 30 days to amend their complaint against the city. The judge said estate attorneys must strengthen the suit's claims that the Los Angeles Police Department obstructed an investigation into Wallace's death and that an LAPD officer, David Mack, was among the conspirators who planned Wallace's death.
Otherwise, Cooper said in a tentative ruling, she will dismiss the complaint against the city with prejudice.
If the suit against the city were dismissed, it would gut a long-shot chance to clear up the Wallace murder and perhaps shed light on the unsolved murder of rap star Tupac Shakur, gunned down in Las Vegas some six months before Wallace was shot on March 9, 1997
One theory is that Wallace was killed in retaliation for Shakur's murder. This theory, which is only that, suggests that the two murders were part of a feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers, notably Wallace's Bad Boy records and L.A.-based Death Row Records, Shakur's label.
An assailant drove by and gunned down Wallace as he sat in a Chevrolet Suburban outside the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles' Mid-Wilshire district, where Wallace had attended a recording industry party. Wallace's murder was one of many that punctuated the rap world during the 1990s, claiming the lives of other rap personalities, including Shakur.
Despite Monday's setback, Wallace estate attorney Robert Frank of Colorado Springs, Colo., told me he is confident that he and his colleagues, Dennis Chang of Los Angeles and Perry Sanders of Lake Charles, La., can amend the complaint to pass muster with Cooper.
In the course of pressing the suit, Frank promised to "do everything that we can to do the investigation that the police should have done" into Wallace's murder.
A key contention of the suit is that former police officer Mack was a participant in the conspiracy to kill Wallace. Moreover, the suit contends that as a police officer Mack acted under color of state law to help kill Wallace.
However, Cooper said she was skeptical of the claim about Mack, in part because Mack supposedly took days off before the Wallace killing and supposedly dressed in street clothes the night Wallace died, all of which "seems to go against the plaintiff" on the color of law issue. Cooper also made it clear she was offering no opinion on whether Mack actually did anything that he is accused of in the suit.
The initial Wallace complaint asserts that Mack may have used tactics such as monitoring police radios to coordinate the Wallace killing, which required precise timing and knowledge of police deployment in the area where Wallace was killed. The complaint also notes that Mack used similar tactics in a bank robbery he committed later in 1997 and for which he is serving a 14-year prison sentence.
If much of this sounds familiar, you're not imagining things.
A lot of scenarios about the Wallace killing have been proposed, often with Mack and another man, Amir Muhammad, serving as the hit team. But the fact remains that no one has ever been charged with Wallace's death.
Indeed, the Wallace estate suit reflects the elaborate conspiracy theories that have popped up in various publications, including Rolling Stone.
The suit also adds an "Alice in Wonderland" twist of its own. It argues that the Los Angeles Police Department "intentionally, willfully and recklessly refused a full and thorough investigation" of the Wallace murder. As a result, the department, including Chief Bernard C. Parks, "tortiously interfered" with the Wallace estate's "ability to discover persons involved with the murder of Christopher G.L. Wallace, and to prove same."
In other words, the cops wouldn't cooperate, so we couldn't solve the crime.
That may be.
But it doesn't throw a lot of light on who really killed Notorious B.I.G.
Frank acknowledged that the Wallace estate suit has a lot of ground to cover, even if it can be amended to suit the judge.
"These are the first steps on a very long road," he said.
Leaving me to wonder, is it possible to have a dead end on the road to nowhere?
Garry Abrams
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