Mistrial declared in civil case over Biggie Smalls murder

The LA Times reports that Judge Florence-Marie Cooper declared a mistrial yesterday in the case filed by Notorious B.I.G.'s family against the Los Angeles Police Department for mishandling the investigation of Christopher Wallace's March 9, 1997 murder. The cause of the mistrial--this may shock you--was suppression of evidence relevant to the trial by the LAPD. The Times's Andrew Blankstein, who's done a superb job of covering the case, writes:

"Family attorneys had accused police of deliberately concealing tapes and more than a thousand pages of internal Los Angeles Police Department documents, including transcripts of conversations with a jailhouse informant who placed two rogue officers, including the key figure in the Rampart police corruption scandal, at the scene of the 1997 Wallace shooting."

The story is here, and be sure to check out the archive of Blankstein stories on the right-hand side. Much of the salient backstory also appears in the fine Nick Broomfield documentary Biggie and Tupac.