Rapper to receive clemency in Slidell murder
On Monday, February 22, 2021, The Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole voted unanimously to grant clemency to a New Orleans entertainer prosecuted for manslaughter 20 years ago by disgraced District Attorney Walter Reed. Governor John Bel Edwards must now decide whether to accept the board’s recommendation and set the man free.
On February 21, 2000, New Orleans-born Rapper McKinley “Mac” Phipps Jr. arrived for his scheduled performance at the Club Mercedes lounge in Slidell. A bar fight that night resulted in the shooting death of 19-year-old Barron C. Victor, Jr., who attempted to break up the fight. Days later, Thomas Williams, a security guard at the club, confessed to firing the shot that killed Victor.
However, by that time, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office had made national headlines charging Phipps with the crime.
Phipps, born July 30, 1977, better known simply as Mac, was an American rapper and songwriter from New Orleans’ 3rd Ward. He began rapping as a child, and in 1990, he released his debut album, The Lyrical Midget, at 13. Mac eventually signed with Percy “Master P” Miller’s No Limit Records in Baton Rouge and became one of the most critically acclaimed artists on the label, both as a solo rapper and as a member of the supergroup 504 Boyz. Mac released 2 solo albums and 1 album with the 504 Boyz on No Limit. In 1998, his album, Shell Shocked, peaked at number 11 on Billboard Magazine’s Top 200 chart.
In 2000, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s office charged Mac Phipps with second-degree murder, but the court ultimately convicted Phipps of manslaughter and sentenced him to thirty years to life at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center. Since the shooting, Phipps has declared his innocence.
Reliving the night of the shooting to the parole board, Phipps recounted seeing a commotion on the dance floor and hearing a shot fired. He ran to the front door to look for his mother, and they left together, he said, adding that he later learned someone shot a man.
The Huffington Post, whose investigative reporters have worked tirelessly on the case since Phipps’ incarceration, wrote in 2016:
“This case highlights the inadequacies of the criminal justice system in Louisiana, which boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world. In a system designed to deal out harsh penalties to convicted offenders, justice for Phipps has been just as elusive as evidence of his guilt.”
At Phipps’ trial, Walter Reed’s office provided no forensic evidence, and the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s office never performed ballistics on the security guard’s gun, and over time, five witnesses have told reporters that St. Tammany Parish authorities bullied them into lying about what they saw the night of the shooting.
Nathaniel Tillison told a jury that he “looked the rapper dead in his eyes” and watched him pull the trigger that killed his cousin.
However, Jurors never heard the testimony of witness Jerry Price, who told Phipps’ legal team Tillison was outside Club Mercedes at the time of the bar fight and could not have witnessed the shooting. Walter Reed’s office had interviewed Price, according to Phipps’ attorneys, but never provided the information to the Defense team.
According to Phipps’ legal team, court documents obtained from the prosecutor’s office in response to a Public Records Request showed that sheriff’s deputies arrested Tillison on felony offenses immediately after Phipps’ trial. The documents also showed that Bruce Dearing personally intervened to secure Tillison’s release from jail.
On the stand, Yulon James, a pregnant, nursing student, told prosecutor Bruce Dearing she saw Phipps fire the fatal shot, but later acknowledged that she “didn’t see anything.”
In a 2015 interview with The Post, she explained, “The DA came over to my parents’ house and told me I would have my baby in prison if I didn’t testify.”
The DA she referred to was Walter Reed, the former district attorney who held office during Phipps’ conviction. A jury convicted Reed in another trial. He served time for conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, and making false statements on his tax returns.
In April of 2016, the publication unearthed a previously unpublished videotaped confession from Williams, confessing to St. Tammany detectives that he pulled the trigger. Investigators made the tape within a week of the shooting.
Mac Phipps has been on work release at a facility in Raceland in Lafourche Parish since earlier this month. His fate is now in the hands of the governor.