NEW YORK – Two New York lawmakers want prosecutors to stop using rap artist lyrics against them in the courtroom, citing freedom of artistic expression and how often there are preconceived notions about gender.
Senator Bran Hoylman and Senator Jamaal Baily of New York City presented their legislation to the Senate on Wednesday called “rap music on trial.” It comes nearly two years after Brooklyn rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was sentenced to two years in prison on multiple counts of racketeering, firearms offenses and drug trafficking.
Democrats claimed prosecutors used 6ix9ine’s music to expose his entanglement with the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods street gang, a move that has put him at risk behind bars. 6ix9ine, whose real name is Daniel Hernández, said he decided to cooperate with prosecutors after the racketeering indictment that named him a member of a gang.
Hernández could have been sentenced to 47 years in prison, but prosecutors recommended a lesser sentence in exchange for his cooperation.
“Art is creative expression, not a model of criminal plans. However, we have seen prosecutors in New York and across the country try to use rap music lyrics as evidence in criminal cases, a practice upheld this year by a Maryland court, “Hoylman said in a statement, referring to Hernandez and rapper Lawrence Montague, whose lyrics were also used in his Annapolis man’s murder trial.
Montague was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the deadly shooting and use of a firearm.
Last year, an appeals court held that Montague’s letter was admissible in court because the letter “is closely linked to the details of an alleged crime.”
If passed, the bill would not completely ban letters in the courtroom. It would require prosecutors to affirmatively show that evidence is admissible by clear and convincing evidence.
“I hope this bill moves forward and legislators in Washington and across the country will follow suit with similar protections,” said Jack Lerner, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who published the “Quick Guide to Lawsuits.” as a resource for defense attorneys.
There have been several other cases where violent lyrics have been used against artists and each case has been different. Unlike Montague, whose lyrics were written after the alleged crime, the letters used in Vonte Skinner’s trial in New Jersey in 2005 were written three or four years earlier, despite the pages being found in his car when he was arrested. .
New Jersey’s highest court ruled in 2014 that Vonte’s violent lyrics should not have been admitted as evidence at his trial. The state supreme court and a lower appeals court blamed the trial judge for allowing prosecutors to read the letter to jurors.
These cases have been closely watched by civil liberties advocates who say the lyrics should be viewed as protected freedom of expression. As Judge Jaynee LaVecchia puts it in her opinion on the Skinner case: “One would not presume that Bob Marley, who wrote the well-known song ‘I Shot the Sheriff,’ actually shot a sheriff? Or that Edgar Allan Poe buried a sheriff. a man under his floorboards, as described in his short story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, simply because of their respective artistic endeavors on those subjects. “
While rap and hip-hop are not the only genres with violent lyrics or crime rhymes, nor do all genre songs contain similar messages, genre lyrics are used primarily against black or Latino artists, the American Civil Liberties Union said in one of its analyzes of such cases.
“The admission of art as criminal evidence only serves to erode this fundamental right, and the use of rap and hip-hop lyrics in particular is emblematic of the systemic racism that permeates our criminal justice system,” Sen. said. Bailey.
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