Art or Artist: The Legality of Lyrics in the Courtroom
On November 9, 2023, Justice Ural Glanville, the judge presiding over rapper Young Thug’s criminal trial, determined that lyrics can be used against him in the courtroom. Young Thug, or Jeffery Lamar Williams, was accused of participating in a “criminal street gang” YSL. In a seven-hour hearing the previous day, Williams’s legal team made the argument of the unconstitutionality of using the lyrics in a courtroom on the basis of freedom of speech and the jury’s potential racial and cultural biases in response to hearing extreme rhetoric. Despite their efforts, Justice Glanville denied the motion. “I'm conditionally admitting those pending lyrics, depending upon – or subject to a foundation that is properly laid by the state or the proponent that seeks to admit that evidence,” said Glanville. This decision has once again spurred long-standing debates surrounding the legality of using creative expression for indictment in music.
This issue is no stranger to the scene. There have been several instances in the past of lyrics being unfairly used in court, such as the case of Mac Phipps, a rapper who in 2001 was convicted of manslaughter after 19-year-old Barron Victor was shot at a club. Much of the evidence used in the trial entailed Phipps’s lyrics, and the prosecution employed them to depict Phipps as a violent individual. Even though a guard at the club named Thomas Williams later confessed to shooting Victor, Phipps’s sentence was maintained. He was released in 2021, twenty years after his conviction.
Several strides have already been made to prevent cases such as Phipp’s in court. A New York Rap Music on Trial bill was passed on November 17, 2021, limiting statewide song evidence. The bill asserts that its purpose is “ensuring that criminal defendants are tried based upon evidence of criminal conduct, not the provocative nature of their artistic works and tastes.” California also passed the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act on September 30, 2022, which similarly placed restrictions on the validity and use of lyrics as evidence in the courtroom. These developments have been supported by several rappers, most notably Jay-Z, in a letter in favor of the New York bill. “The genre is rooted in a long tradition of storytelling that privileges figurative language, is steeped in hyperbole, and employs all of the same poetic devices we find in more traditional works of poetry,” the letter writes.
The Restoring Artistic Protection Act sponsored by Representatives Hank Johnson and Jamaal Bowman, has been proposed at the capitol in response to controversy surrounding the use of lyrics in the indictment of Young Thug. The bill was re-proposed last April, garnering bipartisan support.
For many, the use of lyrics in the courtroom is more than simply an issue of the first amendment. Erik Nielson, professor and co-author of the book “Rap on Trial,” calls the legal use of lyrics “racist.” “Essentially what's happening is rap music is being denied the status of art,” he remarks. Still, some hesitate to limit the use of evidence. Fani Willis, an attorney on the prosecution of the YSL case, believes there is validity in employing lyrics in this way. “I think if you decide to admit your crimes over a beat, I’m going to use it,” she remarks. The role of hip-hip in criminal trials is certainly a unique and complicated issue that is sure to come up in the future. The case of Young Thug and many others in the past demonstrates a rare, interesting intersection between pop-culture, art, race, and the law.