Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center — Snoop Dogg Murder Trial (1995–96)

At the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles, Snoop Dogg — then known as Snoop Doggy Dogg — stood trial for murder from November 1995 to February 1996. The case stemmed from an incident on August 25, 1993, when a man named McKinley Lee was shot and killed by Snoop's bodyguard McKinley Lee (referred to as McKinley Lee Jr.) from a vehicle in which Snoop was driving, following an altercation with a gang member named Philip Woldermariam. Snoop and his bodyguard were both charged with first-degree murder. The trial took place under Judge Paul G. Flynn and drew enormous media attention — arriving just as Doggystyle, Snoop's debut album, had become one of the best-selling rap records in history.

The defence argued self-defence: that Woldermariam had been threatening Snoop and had reached for a weapon, and that the shooting was a justified response. After months of testimony, the jury acquitted both Snoop Dogg and his bodyguard on February 21, 1996. The verdict was widely noted in the context of a Los Angeles still raw from the O.J. Simpson trial the previous year — another high-profile acquittal that divided the city along racial lines. Snoop, who had released his second album Tha Doggfather while the trial was pending, walked out of the Foltz building a free man and went on to become one of the most enduring figures in hip-hop history.

The Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, named for the first woman admitted to the California Bar, remains the primary criminal courthouse for Los Angeles County and has been the setting for dozens of major celebrity trials. The building at 210 West Temple Street processes an extraordinary volume of cases each year, but few have had the cultural resonance of the months in 1995 and 1996 when the fate of one of rap's defining voices was decided inside its courtrooms.