In 2000, McKinley “Mac” Phipps Jr was a 22-year-old rising rap star when he was arrested for murder.
A 19-year-old had been shot at a Slidell, Louisiana, club where Phipps was due to perform, and police quickly zeroed in on the artist as the suspect. A man who was working security at the venue confessed that he had killed the teenager, but still prosecutors pushed forward with a trial against Phipps.
Authorities had no physical evidence or weapon tying Phipps to the murder, but they had something else to bring to court: Phipps’ rap lyrics.
“‘Murder, murder, kill, kill’; ‘Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head.’ Those are some of the lyrics that this defendant chooses to rap when he performs,” the prosecutor told an all-white jury, according to a recent NPR report.
Phipps was convicted and given a 30-year sentence.
Last week, California lawmakers passed new regulations meant to restrict such use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal court, the first-of-its-kind legislation expected to become law in the US.
Experts say that although the impact of the new policy will be narrow, it is a step forward in putting guardrails on a prosecutorial practice that all too often has worked to criminalize the artistic expression of young Black and Latino men.
As prosecutors in Georgia face growing scrutiny over their use of rap lyrics in recent gang conspiracy cases against Gunna and Young Thug, advocates and artists hope the reforms will help expose the tactic.
“We’ve got a long way to go. There are people still sitting in prison who have been affected by this,” said Phipps, who was released last year after two decades in prison. “It’s an attack on free speech and particularly Black art.”
‘It’s effective for prosecutors’
Researchers have tracked more than 500 reported cases of prosecutors using rap music as evidence against defendants in the last 30 years, though that number is probably a significant undercount.
The practice started to surge in the 2000s, when authorities began to rely on social media in cases against amateur rappers, and when law enforcement “gang units” escalated their crackdown, said Erik Nielson, a University of Richmond professor and co-author of Rap on Trial.
The lyrics are typically cited to suggest “gang affiliation”, proof of crimes and intent, or demonstrate a rapper’s “violent” character or threats, and the strategy was used against famous artists like Snoop Dogg in the 1990s, Drakeo the Ruler in 2018 and Tekashi 6ix9ine in 2019.
Jack Lerner, University of California, Irvine law professor and an expert on the subject, said the tactic is used across the US, pointing to a 2004 manual of the American Prosecutors Research Institute, which encouraged the use of lyrics in search warrants and trials to “invade and exploit the defendant’s true personality” and present him as a “criminal wearing a do-rag and throwing a gang sign” to contrast the “nicely tailored … altar boy” in the courtroom.
Although there are rare cases where words or music videos may be linked to specific criminal offenses, experts say research shows their use in court has often worked to prejudice jurors against young men of color.
Multiple studies have found that associating defendants with rap music creates a strong negative bias in jurors and that people are significantly more likely to perceive lyrics as violent, offensive, threatening, dangerous and literal if they are from rap, compared to other genres.
“As soon as you introduce rap, you’re compromising the defense’s ability to have a fair trial,” Lerner said.
Researchers have also found widespread examples of prosecutors taking lyrics out of context, presenting them in inaccurate and misleading ways, treating fictional lines as facts or confessions and using music to expand charges and secure convictions and…
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