Rap lyrics get their day in two court cases
Two recent court decisions that featured aspiring rappers show how powerful the consideration of rap lyrics and the First Amendment can be as evidence in court.
The First Amendment’s free speech rights aren’t unlimited, and as these recent cases involving rap music artists show, rappers can be protected by that constitutional right, or face jail time for saying the wrong things.
One example was a decision this Monday from New Jersey’s Supreme Court, where rapper Vonte Skinner faced attempted murder charges.
The court was considering if Skinner’s violent lyrics should be considered at trial. In 2005, Skinner was convicted in an attempted murder case after prosecutors introduced 13 pages of his own rap lyrics as evidence.
An appeals court overturned the verdict. “This was not a case in which circumstantial evidence of defendant’s writings were critical to show his motive,” the majority wrote in the 2-1 decision. The dissenting judge said that the “defendant’s songs narrated events similar to the conduct which resulted in the charged offenses.”
The state Supreme Court upheld the appeals court decision on Monday, overturning the attempted murder conviction. Burlington County prosecutor Robert Bernardi said his office would retry Skinner on the attempted murder charge.
The New Jersey Supreme Court said rap lyrics are in fact “fictional material” and shouldn’t be used as evidence in cases unless the lyrics had a “direct connection” to the specifics of the investigation and subsequent case.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been supporting Skinner. It didn’t dispute that lyrics can be used as evidence, but the group contended there needed to a direct link to the crime in the case.
In a second case last month, Virginia-based rapper Antwain Steward, also known as Twain Gotti, faced murder charges based on lyrics from one of his songs. On July 16, Gotti received a 16-year sentence from a judge, but not for the two murder charges.
A song from Steward appeared on YouTube (it has since been taken down) and police believed the lyrics implicated him in a double murder back in 2007. But the Newport News Daily Press said the subject of the rap lyrics only surfaced briefly in the trial.
A jury found Steward not guilty on the murder charges, but he received two mandatory eight-year sentences on gun charges. Steward’s attorneys will appeal the convictions.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/crime/dp-nws-rapper-sentence-20140715,0,353081.story
Supporters of the free expression First Amendment argument have cited as precedent one particular song from country music icon Johnny Cash, as showcasing their fictional material argument.
In the Skinner case, the ACLU talked about “Folsom Prison Blues” in its brief to the court.
“That a rap artist wrote lyrics seemingly embracing the world of violence is no more reason to ascribe to him a motive and intent to commit violent acts than to … indict Johnny Cash for having ‘shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,’” the ACLU argued.
The Johnny Cash argument is also being made in a Kansas case where an aspiring rapper, Phillip D. Cheatham Jr., faces a retrial on double murder charges. Prosecutors used evidence from one of Cheatham’s songs, called “Prove Me Guilty,” to make their case.
Cheatham said he acted as a narrator in his songs, like Cash did. Prosecutors argued that song lyrics found in Cheatham’s car reference actual events he may have seen.
“If there had actually been a man in Reno that died,” prosecutor Jacqie Spradlin said, “and Johnny Cash was standing there watching it, it’s not too far of a jump to say that, ‘Hey, Cash may have been the one involved.’ ”
A status conference in the Cheatham case is scheduled for this month. The case is being retried after a court found Cheatham had ineffective assistance of counsel.
