Rap Takes Center Stage at Trial in Killing of Two

coselmedcoselmed 1,114 Posts
edited December 2006 in Strut Central
Personally, I don't agree that rap lyrics are legitimate/credible sources of information...If they were to be taken literally, it would appear that every rapper was a drug kingpin and getting girls before they were famous. December 12, 2006Rap Takes Center Stage at Trial in Killing of Two Detectives By MICHAEL BRICKWhen the police arrested Ronell Wilson in 2003, a day and a half after two undercover detectives were shot in the back of the head, they found scraps of paper in his pocket with handwritten rap lyrics that bragged about a killing.Prosecutors at Mr. Wilson???s trial at Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where he faces the death penalty, say the lyrics amount to a confession written after the shootings. ???In that rap song,??? said Colleen Kavanagh, a federal prosecutor, ???the defendant identifies himself by his nickname, ???Rated R,??? and brags about shooting his victim in the back of the head.???The scraps of paper were formally introduced as evidence yesterday, between testimony from the city???s chief medical examiner and the investigating officers. Alongside such standard evidence, rap lyrics have come up repeatedly in the first two weeks of the trial, most notably in testimony from a federal agent who recited a gang member???s violent, profanity-laden verses for the jury in a halting monotone.Prosecutors are making similar arguments across the country this year, in courtrooms in Albany, Oroville, Calif., College Station, Tex., and Gretna, La. Set to drumbeats or scrawled in notebooks, the rhymes of minor stars, aspiring producers and rank amateurs are being accepted as evidence of criminal acts, intent and mind-set.Defense lawyers usually argue that the lyrics are boastful fantasies, common to the point of irrelevance. Mr. Wilson???s lawyers have indicated that they plan to call a scholar named Yasser Arafat Payne, described in court documents as a rap expert, to make a similar argument.Over more than a decade, rap has evolved as a tool for both the prosecution and defense in criminal trials.In Austin, Tex., in 1993, lawyers for a man charged with killing a state trooper played a Tupac Shakur recording to show jurors that the defendant had been ???brainwashed.??? The man, Ronald Ray Howard, was executed last year. For prosecutors, the concept of lyrics as confessional came naturally as more rap stars themselves started facing trial for shootings. Prosecutors cited Snoop Dogg???s rhyme ???Murder Was the Case??? in his 1996 murder trial. The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, was acquitted.As more prosecutors used the tactic against unknown or aspiring rappers, defense lawyers first tried to contest the admissibility of their lyrics as evidence. In 2002, an appeals court in California ruled against using lyrics unconvincingly ascribed to a defendant, while the Missouri Supreme Court upheld using lyrics as evidence of state of mind. Though the issue does not appear fully resolved, defense lawyers have shifted to arguing the meaning, not the legitimacy, of rap lyrics as evidence.Impeaching defendants with their own words is hardly a novel concept. ???What???s different is the form,??? said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, noting that many defendants appear to believe artistic license renders their lyrical confessions worthless to prosecutors.???Whether it???s a straight confession or written in a diary under lock and key or in rap lyrics,??? he said, ???it???s up to the jury to decide whether it???s probative of guilt.???In the Brooklyn case, Mr. Wilson is accused of killing Detectives James V. Nemorin and Rodney J. Andrews on March 10, 2003, while operating as a member of a drug gang on Staten Island. The detectives were working undercover, seeking to buy an assault weapon.Rap has been a recurring sidelight of the trial.On an audio surveillance recording, jurors heard the undercover detectives call Staten Island ???Shaolin??? in homage to the Wu-Tang Clan, the borough???s most famous rap export, a group whose members are somewhat obsessed with martial arts. A defense lawyer, Ephraim Savitt, briefly asked one witness to explain the reference, but never got a clear answer.Seeking to demonstrate the existence of a criminal organization they call the Stapleton Crew, prosecutors submitted rap lyrics attributed to a member of the gang, Jamal Brown, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence for conspiracy. Handwritten, with performance instructions such as ???Chorus 2x,??? the lyrics are stamped ???Government Exhibit 7.02(a).??? One printable passage employs nicknames to present a sort of group biography. ???Rated, Ice and Poppy still locked in the cage, Keyo got killed and Jeda got draft to the team,??? Mr. Brown wrote, ???Stan, Gino, Jr. and Nate made the circle complete.???Whatever their reliability as documentation, the lyrics were clearly not intended to be presented in the style they were in court. In a flat voice, Special Agent Thomas P. Kelly of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives read them to the jury, wincing slightly at the curse words and racial epithets. When the agent was done, a defense lawyer, Kelly J. Sharkey, assured him that the cross-examination would be relatively easy.???I???m not going to ask you to read the raps again,??? she said. Special Agent Kelly???s face was not the only one to register relief.Another defense lawyer, Mitchell Dinnerstein, sought to show that a lot of men in their early 20s, including those in the group mentioned in Mr. Brown???s lyrics, composed violent rap lyrics. That line of questioning could be used to argue that the rhymes are fantasies.???Did you ever hear Squid do rap songs???? Mr. Dinnerstein asked a witness, an aspiring member of the group who is cooperating with the government. ???How about Junior, did you ever hear him do rap songs????But prosecutors are seeking to focus attention on the lyrics of Mr. Wilson. The judge overseeing the case, Nicholas G. Garaufis, has ruled that the words scribbled on scratch paper found in the defendant???s pocket are acceptable evidence. The judge wrote that the lyrics describe central elements of the crime and make reference in the first person to Mr. Wilson???s street name, Rated R.The scraps of paper entered into evidence yesterday included significant revisions, with entire lines scratched out and writing in the margins.???Leave a 45 slug in the back of your,??? appears at the top of one page, trailing off illegibly. Then the stanzas pick up again, arranged in rows.???It???s da lightskin kid, most hated Rated,??? the documents say, ???Come teast Rated U Better have that vest and dat Galock.??? As the trial began last month, defense lawyers filed a letter of intent to call the expert witness.???The rap expert is expected to testify that rap music lyrics often describe violent and sexual acts, and other antisocial behavior, that are not necessarily rooted in actual events,??? the lawyers wrote. ???The expert is also expected to testify that rap music lyrics are often based on imagination and fantasy, rather than on reality. We will update the information as soon as we learn more details.???In a letter to the court Friday, prosecutors indicated that they planned to question the expert???s credibility. They mentioned several defense witnesses, including experts on forensics and mental health, but only references to the rap expert were enclosed in quotation marks. The prosecutors wrote that they had been shown ???no summary of this witness???s ???expert opinion.??? ???http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/nyregion/12trial.html?_
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  Comments


  • coselmedcoselmed 1,114 Posts
    Relevant comment from an interview with celebrity defense attorney Scott Leemon that I read yesterday (he was not commenting specifically on this case):

    Do you find the hip-hop community specifically targeted by the law perhaps as a result of their lyrics, and can those lyrics be used against them in court?


    SL: Maybe. They are targeted because they get press and the police like good press. Statistically, ???hip hop??? people do not commit more crime, but their arrests are always reported by the media. Why? Because it sells papers and brings in high ratings. As to the lyrics, I believe it is all art and should never be admissible in court. I have heard some courts have ruled the other way. I believe those decisions are erroneous. It needs to be remembered, ???lyrics are a form of art; art is not always truthful.???[/b]

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    Given all the chatter over Clipse's lyrical content, and the presumed negative effect things of that nature have on society, I would have expected this post to get a few responses at least, particularly on the "art is not always truthful" point. There's a potential five-pager on the topic of that concept and its relationship to so-called crack-rap/trap muzik alone.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts

  • BrianBrian 7,618 Posts
    "It's about boasting. It's about exaggerating. ... It's about acting," he said. "If Robert De Niro, or Al Pacino or Marlon Brando are charged with shooting somebody, are they going to be playing clips from `The Godfather' in court?"

  • ReynaldoReynaldo 6,054 Posts
    "It's about boasting. It's about exaggerating. ... It's about acting," he said. "If Robert De Niro, or Al Pacino or Marlon Brando are charged with shooting somebody, are they going to be playing clips from `The Godfather' in court?"
    That's a decent analogy if the rapper on trial is famous.

  • GuzzoGuzzo 8,611 Posts
    file under: complete idiots

    In February, an 18-year-old was convicted of a murder near Staunton, Virginia, after the prosecution brought up a rap he composed in jail that referred to the killing.

    Last year, a jury in Alabama sentenced a man named Nathaniel Woods to death for his role in the murder of three Birmingham police officers after prosecutors showed the jury rap lyrics and drawings he kept in jail that glorified the slayings.

  • dayday 9,611 Posts
    Yasser Arafat Payne... rap expert


    crazy.

    How does one become a "rap expert"?

    This is an interesting situation though.

    :5pager:

  • BrianBrian 7,618 Posts
    How does one become a "rap expert"?
    read or post on soulstrut

  • noznoz 3,625 Posts
    How does one become a "rap expert"?

    Paging Deej.

  • white_teawhite_tea 3,262 Posts
    This is one of those case-by-case-basis things. Sure, most songs are just art. But at the same time, if a indie rocker writes some sappy breakup song, will the audience assume that he has just gone through a breakup or that he is just fantasizing?

    And if some painter is painting some nasty rape picture, sure it might be art but that dude could a rapist.

    Some of those rappers are dumb as rocks. That's for sure.

  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    How does one become a "rap expert"?

    Paging Deej.
    ???
    this coming from the rap cassette collector

  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    In September, a prosecutor in Richmond, California, held up cardboard signs bearing rap lyrics as he made his closing argument against a teenager accused of murdering a high school football player. The teen, Darren Pratcher, had written a rap in which he had warned: "If you ain't from our part of town, you're a (expletive) target."

    Prosecutor David Brown told jurors Pratcher was simply acting out that philosophy when he gunned down his victim, who was not from the neighborhood.

    The jury voted to convict.

    "They were words of his soul," Brown said of the teen's writings. "It was my understanding from his lyrics that he knew exactly who he was shooting."

    Pratcher, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, could get life in prison.
    Not that I know the rest of the evidence in the case, but thats fucked.
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