The ACLU questions whether rap lyrics used as evidence is because prosecutors "have a tendency to prejudice a jury." Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images

When Vonte Skinner wrote, “Yo, look in my eyes. You can see death comin’ quick. Look in my palms. You can see what I’m gunnin’ with,” he probably didn't think the rap lyrics would one day be used against him as evidence in a court of law. But that is exactly what happened to the aspiring rapper after a shooting in 2005 left Lamont Peterson, who sold drugs with Skinner, paralyzed from the waist down. Skinner was charged with and convicted of attempted murder, the guilty verdict sealed in part by the prosecution’s reading of 13 pages of rap lyrics filled with violent themes. He went by the name Threat, which he also has tattooed on his arm, and made music with his younger brother, Amar Dean, a rap producer. “He actually got me started (with music) when I was in, like, fifth or sixth grade,” Dean said on the witness stand. He later described the selection of Skinner’s lyrics the prosecution read in court as “horror lyrics.” His lyrics are hyperbolic and often funny. About his bravery, he wrote, “I stand up and dump, never duck and squeeze/ and I leave you pricks Daffy with the duck disease.” He refers to “Star Wars” in another line, writing, “You think you had Jedi, but haven't felt the Force yet. My slugs make you thinner like smut broads in corsets.” Skinner’s conviction was later overturned on appeal, and the New Jersey Supreme Court is set to hear the case the first week in March. Yet his case is only one example of an alarming trend of prosecutors’ using rap lyrics to paint defendants as criminals on the basis of their art, according to critics. An amicus brief filed by the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Skinner found 17 other criminal cases in which prosecutors attempted to use rap lyrics as evidence, despite their sometimes having little, if anything, to do with the crimes. “All of (these cases) dealt with rap lyrics, mostly gangsta rap lyrics, and you don’t see any other form of music being used” like that, said Ezra Rosenberg, author of the ACLU brief. “I don’t know if the prosecutors are using (rap lyrics) because they believe in good faith they should or whether they are being used because they have a tendency to prejudice a jury.”

Character evidence?

Courts generally don’t allow evidence that is intended to damage a defendant’s character but isn’t related directly to the crime — though rap lyrics seem to be an exception. In Skinner’s case, the appeals court determined that although he rhymed about a Tec-9, the same type of gun used to shoot Peterson, “there was no evidence that defendant did any of the acts he wrote about in his lyrics or had any knowledge of the subject matter of his work beyond what might be seen in a violent movie,” so the lyrics were inadmissible as evidence. In some of the cases cited by the ACLU, the justifications that courts give for admitting lyrics as evidence border on the absurd. For instance, in a case against Vincent Foster an appeals court determined that his rhyme “Key for key, pound for pound/ I’m the biggest dope dealer, and I serve all over town,” was admissible because it showed he was “familiar with drug code words and, to a certain extent, narcotics trafficking.” Other times, the lyrics hew closer to the crimes committed — for example, when Dennis Greene, on trial for murdering his wife, rapped that his wife “made me mad, and I had to take her life. My name is Dennis Greene, and I ain’t got no f---ing wife.” But in several of the cases, prosecutors used lyrics to demonstrate a violent state of mind or gang membership. In U.S. v. Wilson, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed “rap lyrics (that) reflect group pride in (a crew’s) violent character.” Another recent case, not included in the brief because it is under appeal, is that of Alex Medina, who was 14 when prosecutors say he stabbed another teenager to death at a party. Medina was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years to life after a trial in which prosecutors read lyrics of his like “Put me down for murder in the first degree” and others to demonstrate his membership in a local gang. None of the cases that the ACLU mentions have directly addressed the First Amendment implications of using rap lyrics as evidence.

Literal interpretations