#Rip lyrics for free
“This ruling represents a major victory for free speech,” the group wrote on Twitter. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California welcomed the decision, saying rap is protected speech under the First Amendment. “The California Legislature has provided a mechanism to rid the criminal justice system of racial bias, and the court here followed the law and vacated the convictions.”
Jackson’s lawyer, Matthew O’Connor, wrote in an email that “jury trials are the search for truth.” “Explicit and implicit bias do not aid in that effort,” he wrote. The judge agreed that “an objective observer” could conclude that the repeated use of the racial slur was discriminatory and “dehumanizing.” Jackson also claimed that the prosecution’s repetition of a racial slur that they had used in rap lyrics, which the prosecutor repeated while questioning a police officer who testified at trial, was racially discriminatory. She found insufficient evidence, however, that the term “down-low,” would activate “subconscious stereotypes of African American men as violent or dishonest.” The judge found that an “objective observer” could conclude that the terms “drug rip” and “pistol whip,” which the prosecutor used 29 times during closing arguments, were “racially coded” terms that evoked stereotypes of African American men as more likely to engage in violence.
#Rip lyrics trial
“Each of these slang phrases were introduced into trial in the first instance by the prosecutor,” she wrote. Bryant never used those terms himself, Judge Maier wrote. The slang terms used by the prosecutor included “pistol whip,” “drug rip” and “down-low,” as well as several nicknames.
Jackson had argued that, during closing arguments, the prosecution had used “racially coded phrases” that evoked stereotypes of African American men as criminals with a propensity for violence, the judge wrote. The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately comment. “It primed the jurors’ implicit bias regarding negative character evaluations of African American men as rap artists and as being associated” with criminal behavior, Judge Maier wrote. They contended that because none of the experts spoke to any of the jurors, “there was no actual measurable evidence to support their opinions” that the prosecution had triggered implicit bias among the jurors, according to the judge.īut Judge Maier cited expert testimony that, she said, supported the men’s argument that, whether purposefully or not, the prosecution’s use of their rap lyrics as evidence of their involvement in the killing and gang membership “premised their convictions on racially discriminatory evidence.” Prosecutors urged the court to disregard the experts’ testimony. In California’s Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action.īeginning last year, the men presented the testimony of an expert in implicit bias and legal rhetoric, an expert in the history, culture and conventions of rap music and racial bias in the legal system and an expert in rap music, including content analysis. Warehouse Moratorium : As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back.A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights - a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California - endured for decades.Bullet Train to Nowhere : Construction of the California high-speed rail system, America’s most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare.“This case realizes the promise of the California Racial Justice Act, which was designed to prohibit racial bias in policing, prosecution and sentencing,” Ellen McDonnell, the public defender in Contra Costa County, where the convictions were overturned, said in a statement. Although the decision did not hinge on the expansion, it could pave the way for similar challenges, defense lawyers said. He also signed a separate bill that restricted the use of rap lyrics and other creative works as evidence in criminal proceedings. Gavin Newsom signed an expansion of the law last week. The decision was of particular interest because Gov.
The ruling was the first by a judge in California to find that the use of rap lyrics violated the Racial Justice Act, a state law signed in 2020 that seeks to prevent racial and ethnic discrimination in criminal trials, Mary McComb, the state public defender, said on Tuesday. A judge in California vacated the murder convictions of two Black men on Monday, finding that the prosecution had most likely injected racial bias into the trial by quoting the men’s rap lyrics and repeating their use of a racial slur, court records show.
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