Testimony in Rapper’s Trial Assailed

Prosecutors have tried to fit round pegs into square holes to convict Snoop Doggy Dogg and a former bodyguard of murder, a defense attorney said Wednesday in closing arguments at the rapper’s trial.

Attorney David Kenner told jurors that prosecutors picked only details that supported their claims of murder from what he called unreliable and sometimes contradictory testimony of their witnesses.

“We have spent two months at this table wrestling with the prosecution, who has continued to try to put round pegs into square holes to get their witness testimony to fit their case,” said Kenner, the rapper’s lawyer.

Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, and former bodyguard McKinley Lee, 25, are charged with murdering Philip Woldemariam at Woodbine Park in August 1993 after an earlier confrontation near Broadus’ home.

The defense contends that Lee fired in self-defense when he shot Woldemariam from a Jeep driven by Broadus, 24.

The prosecution presented its closing statement Monday and Tuesday.

Kenner criticized the testimony of Woldemariam’s friends, Jason London and Dushaun Joseph, who were with him at the time of the shooting.

He said Joseph initially lied when he told police that Woldemariam was unarmed when he was shot. Joseph changed his story and testified that he and London took a gun from Woldemariam’s waistband after the shooting, Kenner said.

Kenner called London’s and Joseph’s original story a conspiracy to convict the defendants and said they changed their accounts only after learning that the defense had located a witness who had seen a gun on Woldemariam.

The defense attorney also suggested that Woldemariam may have been intoxicated at the time, noting that his blood-alcohol level at autopsy was 0.07% and was probably higher at the time of the shooting.

Woldemariam’s relatives, sitting behind prosecutors, shook their heads in disagreement.

“I’m confident that when we’re done . . . it is Philip Woldemariam’s actions, words and deeds on Aug. 25, 1993, that caused his death, and not the defendants’,” Kenner said.

He dismissed prosecution allegations that Broadus and Lee disposed of the Jeep and tried to avoid arrest by not reporting the shooting to police.

Broadus and Lee did not know police were looking for them until a week after the shooting, Kenner said. When they learned that they were being sought, Broadus and Lee reported promptly to police Sept. 2, the attorney said.

Kenner ridiculed the prosecution’s depiction of Woldemariam as an innocent victim who calmly tried to explain to the Jeep’s occupants that he only wanted to find out who they were when he earlier had flashed a gang sign.

Kenner sarcastically called Woldemariam “the Henry Kissinger of Woodbine Park . . . doing shuttle diplomacy between a picnic table and a Jeep.”

Kenner said Woldemariam did not have to actually pull the gun from his waistband for it to be a case of self-defense.

“It’s a question of whether or not the person in the vehicle had a good-faith belief that his life or the life of others in the vehicle [was] in danger or that there was a threat of serious bodily injury,” Kenner said.