S. Samuel
Junior M.A.F.I.A's Lil Cease has spoken up on the 13-year investigation of Notorious B.I.G.'s murder and said authorities have not taken the case seriously.
Despite differences with late rapper Tupac Shakur in the 1990’s, Cease also felt his murderer should be brought down.
“I’m definitely upset about it,” Lil’ Cease told MTV News this week. “I think it’s something they should look into, especially when you see all these other things going on and you see how they pursue other cases. It just seems like when it came to Biggie, it was, ‘Oh, another rapper, another hoodlum, another gangster is dead.’ Same thing with 2Pac. These were two of the most influential figures in hip-hop, and you’re not finding these people’s murderers? Or not even making a real attempt to? It upsets you, ’cause they’re treating them like nobodies but they had a big influence in the game and people look up to them. No matter what they rap about or what they’d been through, they were still human beings at the time.” (MTV)
Last month, a wrongful death lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department was dismissed.
On Monday April 5th, Judge Jacqueline Nguyen dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, after an eight-year wrongful death lawsuit in federal court. Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, was gunned down in March of 1997, after attending an after party during the Soul Train Awards in Los Angeles. Although it has never been proven, the wrongful death lawsuit claimed that Marion “Suge” Knight conspired with Amir Muhammad, the alleged triggerman and LAPD officers Rafael Perez and David Mack, to murder Notorious B.I.G. (All Hip Hop)
The lawsuit also named numerous high-ranking officials with close ties to former Death Row Records owner Suge Knight.
The implications of the judge’s decision extended far beyond the mystery of B.I.G.’s unsolved murder. For months, Los Angeles’ most prominent political figures and police officials, along with the city’s most influential media, had been insisting that this legal claim by B.I.G.’s family was nothing more than a nuisance suit, based on an outlandish conspiracy theory that attempted to tie a group of LAPD officers — affiliated with Suge Knight’s Death Row Records and the Bloods gang — to not only the murders of B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, but also to the origins of the biggest police-corruption case in Los Angeles history, the so-called Rampart scandal. (Rolling Stone)
In May 2008, the lawsuit was reinstated.
A Los Angeles judge reinstated a wrongful death suit filed by the family of The Notorious B.I.G. after an earlier decision claimed a prior lawsuit failed to meet a state-mandated deadline. JudgeFlorence-Marie Cooper of the U.S. District Court tossed out the lawsuit March 21 on grounds that the suit missed a state deadline on the case, which brought a claim against the city of Los Angeles and two former police officers. The suit was first brought up in superior court before it moved to the federal district. (XXL Mag)
Check out a past Notorious B.I.G. interview down below:
