In September 2006, a prosecutor in Richmond, Calif., held up cardboard signs with rap lyrics as he made his closing arguments against a teenager accused of killing 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 wasn't from the same 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, was convicted and sentenced 50 years in confinement. 
Vonte Skinner, a New Jersey native was involved in a 2005 shooting. During Mr. Skinner’s trial in 2008, the prosecutor read the jury 13 pages of violent lyrics written by Mr. Skinner, even though all of the lyrics were written before the crime (in some cases, years before) and none of them mentioned the victim or specific details about the crime.In keeping with rap’s “gangsta” subcategory, the lyrics read like an tribute to violent street life, with bars like “In the hood, I am a threat / It’s written on my arm and signed in blood on my Tech” — a reference to a Tec-9 handgun. “I’m in love with you, death.”The other evidence against Mr. Skinner was largely testimony from witnesses who changed their stories multiple times. And yet, the jury found him guilty of attempted murder, and he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.But in 2012, the conviction was overturned by an appellate court that ruled that the lyrics should never have been admitted as evidence. The majority opinion stated, “We have a significant doubt about whether the jurors would have found defendant guilty if they had not been required to listen to the extended reading of these disturbing and highly prejudicial lyrics.” The state appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.Mr. Skinner’s case is far from unique. Rap lyrics and videos are turning up as evidence in courtrooms across the country with alarming regularity
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Torrence Hatch, the Baton Rouge, La., rapper better known to fans as Lil Boosie, fought a major setback recently. Charged with first-degree murder in the 2009 shooting death of Terry Boyd, Boosie was accused of paying his long-time friend Mike "Marlo Mike" Loudon $2,800 to be the shooter. A conviction would have put him behind bars for a long time.But local prosecutors had very little to work with. With no physical evidence tying Boosie to the crime, they built their case on a confession from Marlo Mike — a statement he later recanted during the trial — and, more important, Boosie's rap lyrics. Despite objections from defense attorneys, District Judge Mike Erwin allowed prosecutors to present lyrics from the songs "187" and "Bodybag," which they claimed provided evidence of Boosie's involvement in the murder. Fortunately for Boosie, the jurors were not convinced. After just an hour of deliberations, they found him not guilty in a unanimous decision.
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Two men identified as Holmes and Reed intersected two friends ,Nelson and Clark in the studio's parking lot. Holmes took Nelson’s necklace and “bunny-eared” (turned inside out) his pockets and eventually removed his ski mask and said, “I'm going to shoot this f @# $ing guy,” which he did. Nelson staggered, then fell and died. Clark managed to call 911 and flee.The police investigated, but could not initially identify the two assailants. They did find a fresh, unweathered cigarette butt near the scene, from which the crime lab extracted a DNA sample. But the sample did not produce a database match, so the case went cold.Three years later, a routine database search matched the DNA from the cigarette to a sample Holmes gave California parole authorities. Nevada detectives traveled to interview Holmes and then arrested him, charging him with murder and robbery. While in jail awaiting extradition, Holmes wrote 18 rap songs, a stanza from one of which was admitted as evidence, over objection, at his trial. In part, the lyrics read: ”But now I'm uh big dog, my static is real large. Uh neighborhood super star. Man I push uh hard line. My attitude . . . you don't want to test this. I catching slipping at the club and jack you for your necklace. . . . Man I'm parking lot jacking, running through your pockets with uh ski mask on straight laughing.”The jury found Holmes guilty of robbery and first-degree murder. Holmes appealed on the grounds that the admission of the rap song into evidence was prejudicial, but the court held that the similarities between the lyrics and the facts of the charged robbery were relevant. The verse included details that matched facts established by Clark and other witnesses at the trial. The court held that cross-examination can challenge the value of the evidence. In other words, the jury can evaluate the lyrics in the context of other evidence presented at the trial.The evidence was, as Holmes’ lawyer noted, “prejudicial,” but the jury was instructed not to consider the lyrics a confession. Evidence is only prejudicial if it results in an unfair prejudice. Holmes v. State, 306 P.3d 415 (Nev. 2013)
These are just a few cases on how governments are using hip hop lyrics in trail.In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey found that in 18 cases in which courts considered the admissibility of rap related content as evidence, lyrics were allowed in nearly 80 percent of the cases.
Bun B,houston rapper says. “If someone decides to incriminate themselves,then thats their own thing,I think that the problem is that,you know once we open this door to start,just going through everyones rap lyrics to try to find crime in there,I think that where we have the problem”.Common consensus believes rap is targeted because it is a predominantly African American genre,basically, racially profiling through music.
“The fallacy of it is that it confuses art with fact," said Bruce Rogow, who defended the Florida rap group 2 Live Crew on charges of obscenities in the 1990s. "What you see are prosecutors reaching for anything they can to try to paint bad character."
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Philadelphia defense attorney Michael Coard, who also teaches a class on hip hop at Temple University, said attempting to use rap as a window into a defendant's mind is especially problematic, especially with rap's tradition of overly ridiculous bragging.
"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?"
Judges occasionally agree.
http://rapradar.com/2014/01/19/bun-b-on-rap-lyrics-used-in-court-on-cnn/
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