Lawyers in B.I.G. Case Deny They Deceived

A week after a federal judge accused them of deceiving her, lawyers for the family of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, said the city “gave a really incomplete view of what happened” when officials accused them of misleading the court.

In papers filed Tuesday, attorneys for Wallace’s family said the city was acting out of a “desperate attempt to prevent additional discovery” about police misconduct.

The explanation was an attempt to satisfy Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, who declared last week that she was “so angry right now that I can hardly even speak.” She accused attorneys for Wallace’s family of lying when they claimed they had never seen a report detailing allegations by a jailhouse informant that ex-LAPD Rampart Division Officer Rafael Perez had been implicated in the killing of Wallace, gunned down outside the Petersen Automotive Museum in 1997.

The murder remains unsolved, and Wallace’s family sued the city in 2002, claiming that rogue LAPD officers had been behind the shooting.

Last year, the family’s attorneys claimed that the city had failed to disclose the informant’s allegations. At that time, Cooper declared a mistrial and ordered $1.1 million in sanctions against the city.

But on May 23, attorneys for the city went to court to say they had proof that the family’s attorneys had had information about the informant since at least November 2002. The city also asked that the discovery process be halted.

The judge was not happy.

“I’m just absolutely outraged, because I feel this court has been totally deceived,” she said, according to a transcript.

She gave the Wallace family’s attorneys seven days to explain themselves. Now the city has seven more days to answer the explanation.

At that point, Cooper said, she will “make a determination as to what, if anything, needs to be done.”

She added that this “might be the time to settle this case.”

Perry R. Sanders Jr., an attorney for the family, said in an interview late Wednesday: “I would hope the judge looks at [the filing] and realizes we did nothing whatsoever to misrepresent anything.”