Grave Injustice

This month's release of O'Millian's Dream, the debut disc of Max "Madd Maxx" Chenier, marks a high point in the local rapper's young career. Alas, anyone hoping to check out his next show won't have that chance — a gunman mowed him down in the Oceanview two years ago.

Since then, while working to keep his music alive, Chenier's family has shown equal fervor in asserting that the district attorney's office botched the case against the man whom police suspected of the murder. Chenier, 23, was shot to death in November 2005 as he sat in a car outside his grandfather's home on Farallones Street. According to police, a man in a black sedan rolled up, stepped out, and fired more than a dozen bullets at Chenier.

Eyewitness accounts led the cops to search for Marcus McNeil, then 19, whose rap sheet included two convictions on weapons-related charges. Days later, he surrendered to authorities in Ohio, where he had fled to a relative's house. But San Francisco prosecutors balked at charging him, citing a lack of evidence.

District Attorney Kamala Harris, pressed by Chenier's family and police, convened a grand jury to review the evidence in early 2006; the panel refused to indict McNeil. Yet sources familiar with the case suggest only one of two witnesses to the shooting — and none of the Ohio officers who arrested McNeil — was called to the stand. Likewise, prosecutors apparently presented no testimony from an SFPD patrolman who, a day before the shooting and near where it occurred, pulled over McNeil — who was driving a black sedan.

Though declining to discuss specifics, Maurice Chenier, Max's uncle and a Los Angeles attorney, blasts the district attorney for the grand jury's decision. "The police did their part," he says. "Kamala Harris didn't." (A spokeswoman for Harris declined to comment.)

Either way, the episode failed to scare McNeil straight. He spent six months in jail last year on a drug conviction, and in January, after leading officers on a high-speed car chase, he returned to custody on charges of fleeing police.

It remains unclear whether McNeil knew Max Chenier, but according to authorities, Chenier had neither gang ties nor a criminal record. He left behind a fiancée, young daughter, and budding music career; Maurice Chenier plans to produce at least two more CDs of his nephew's hyphy-heavy songs. "Max had a lot to say," Maurice says. "The world was robbed."