Mistrial in Notorious B.I.G Trial

A federal judge declared yesterday a mistrial in Notorious B.I.G wrongful death case, attorneys on both sides said.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper declared Tuesday that she's pretty sure the LAPD police had deliberately withheld evidence.

The sentence give the rap star's family the opportunity to file a new lawsuit seeking to link his unsolved 1997 killing to a Los Angeles Police Department corruption scandal.

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."

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 Notorious B.I.G. death.

On March 9, 1997 Biggie was shot and killed in Los Angeles, where he had been attending a party by VIBE Magazine at the Peterson Automotive Museum. It is believed that the murder was a revenge for 2Pac Shakur's death.