Man Who Shot the Rapper Nipsey Hussle Is Convicted of Murder (Published 2022)

LOS ANGELES — More than three years after the fatal shooting of the rapper Nipsey Hussle, whose 2019 killing in front of the local clothing store he owned scarred the South Los Angeles neighborhood he had devoted his adult life to championing, a jury on Wednesday found Eric R. Holder Jr. guilty of first-degree murder in the case. The verdict closes a painful chapter in recent hip-hop history.

At trial, prosecutors described the gunman as an embittered acquaintance who had belonged to the same street gang as Hussle but felt disrespected by him during a brief parking-lot run-in.

That Mr. Holder pulled the trigger was not in dispute in court. His own public defender and multiple witnesses identified him as the assailant who fired toward Hussle with two handguns, hitting the rapper at least 10 times before kicking him in the head.

But Mr. Holder’s legal team had argued that the case was overcharged. Aaron Jansen, the public defender representing Mr. Holder, said that the killing was not premeditated and instead occurred in the “heat of passion,” about nine minutes after a conversation in which Hussle invoked neighborhood rumors that Mr. Holder had cooperated with law enforcement, or snitched, a serious offense in the gang world, and urged him to clear things up.

Mr. Holder should have been charged with voluntary manslaughter, his lawyer said.

After meeting for less than an hour on a second day of deliberations, the jury members indicated they agreed with Los Angeles county prosecutors that Mr. Holder had made the decision to kill Hussle as he returned to a car after the two spoke, loaded a gun, took a few bites of French fries and then marched back through the parking lot to confront the rapper.

Mr. Holder, 32, was also found guilty of two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter, stemming from the two bystanders who were wounded in the shooting, lesser charges than the attempted murder counts that prosecutors had brought.