Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central right now. In Atlanta, the
Speaker 1: rapper Young Thug is on trial for gang activities, and
Speaker 1: it is not without controversy. Atlanta rappers Gunna and Young
Speaker 1: Thug responsible for dozens of chart topping hits. They find
Speaker 1: themselves at the center of a controversial debate in court.
Speaker 1: Should rapper lyrics be used as evidence in the courtroom?
Speaker 1: The rappers lyrics one piece of evidence prosecutors are using
Speaker 1: in the indictment bad hair something doing. The prosecution citing
Speaker 1: lyrics like that in the indictment as proof of criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 1: The district attorney believes he is the ringleader of the
Speaker 1: Y s O Gang and his lyrics are fair game.
Speaker 1: I think if you decide to admit your crimes over
Speaker 1: a beat, I'm gonna use it. That sounds like every
Speaker 1: mama I've ever seen in my life. F Y young people,
Speaker 1: when your name is Young Thug, are gonna You're gonna
Speaker 1: go to jail, your mumble rapper. But they heard them
Speaker 1: clearly on that wire tap. I know that the issue
Speaker 1: is should prosecutors use rap lyrics in criminal trials? That's
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about tonight in our segment
Speaker 1: long story short well, since the nineties, prosecutors have used
Speaker 1: lyrics as evidence against indefendants in more than over five
Speaker 1: hundred trials. But don't get me wrong. If you rap
Speaker 1: about something you did do well, that's a confession. If
Speaker 1: you wrap about something you didn't do that is artistic expression.
Speaker 1: And here are just a few examples of ways rappers
Speaker 1: lyrics get used in court. A rapper named Terence Hatch,
Speaker 1: known as Little Boosey, was trying for first degree murder.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors argued that a few cryptic words of one rap
Speaker 1: song were in fact a confession. Rapper McKinley Phipps was
Speaker 1: sentenced to thirty years in prison for manslaughter. Prosecutors presented
Speaker 1: Splice to gather lyrics from two different songs as evidence
Speaker 1: at his trial. Police say Antoine Stewart, a rapper who
Speaker 1: goes by the name Twain Gotti, made a big mistake
Speaker 1: when he recorded the song right out. Police believe Stewart
Speaker 1: braggs through his lyrics about how he killed Brian Dean
Speaker 1: and Christopher Horton. Listen, some of the details match. The
Speaker 1: shooting happened on a porch. No witnesses immediately came forward,
Speaker 1: but others don't. The time of day is wrong, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a stabbing, the caliber of the gun is wrong,
Speaker 1: and there's only one victim mentioned, not two. Based largely
Speaker 1: on that rap and on the accounts of two witnesses
Speaker 1: given years after the shooting, the rapper was arrested and
Speaker 1: charged with double murder. Okay, they got the gun wrong,
Speaker 1: they got the stabbing wrong, they got the number of
Speaker 1: victims wrong. The only thing they got right was the porch.
Speaker 1: And every black person I know got a goddamn porch.
Speaker 1: I mean, and by the way, not everything black people
Speaker 1: saying songs. It is true. Like Bob Marley, he didn't
Speaker 1: actually shoot the sheriff. He just wanted you to think
Speaker 1: he did. Say y'all wouldn't put him. That's it, Sir,
Speaker 1: mix a lot. He don't like big butts, nobby, more
Speaker 1: of a bool God, trust me. And I'm a comedian.
Speaker 1: I never in my life seeing a rabbi and the
Speaker 1: priest walking to a damn bar. I've never seen that.
Speaker 1: Art is an expression. They use this to reflect black
Speaker 1: life in America, and now they're being punished for it.
Speaker 1: But some prosecutors say too bad. David Lebon is a
Speaker 1: former gang prosecutor. He's now the CEO of the Association
Speaker 1: of Prosecuting Attorneys. I would say, you can't have it
Speaker 1: both ways. Cannot say that I'm rapping about stuff because
Speaker 1: this is what I live in and this is what
Speaker 1: I see every day, and then come into court and
Speaker 1: say everything that I said in that rap is is
Speaker 1: completely untrue. You can have it both ways. It's called fiction,
Speaker 1: and they they have a whole section in Barns and Nobles.
Speaker 1: Read a book, bitch. I don't even think that prosecutors
Speaker 1: think their lyrics are confession. They just do it because
Speaker 1: it works, and it works because juries are made of people,
Speaker 1: and people are kind of racist. As a matter of fact.
Speaker 1: In a recent study, people were given identical lyrics and
Speaker 1: told that they either came from country artists, or rap
Speaker 1: artists or heavy metal artists, and surprise, surprise, people were
Speaker 1: more likely to think that rap lyrics were written by
Speaker 1: a criminal. Clearly, rap is just code for black persons,
Speaker 1: country is cod for white person and heavy metalists for
Speaker 1: who knows. I don't know what that is. But there's
Speaker 1: violence in almost every art form, but the one with
Speaker 1: young black rappers is the only one that gets treated
Speaker 1: this way, and this isn't even hypothetical. There was a
Speaker 1: white woman on trial for murdering her husband and she
Speaker 1: had written an essay called how to Murder Your Husband?
Speaker 1: And guess what the judge he wouldn't allow the essay
Speaker 1: to be read in because he said they could prejudice
Speaker 1: the jury. She she lucky Dr Dre didn't write the foreward,
Speaker 1: and I agree with that it does prejudice the jury.
Speaker 1: The worst part about all of this is that rappers
Speaker 1: have to listen to their lyrics get butchered and coort
Speaker 1: by people with no flow at all. Hey, this is
Speaker 1: that slime ship, Hey y and cell ship Hey killing
Speaker 1: twelve Ship murder gang bitch y and cell until We're
Speaker 1: dead and Pale. I never killed anybody, but I got
Speaker 1: something to do with that body ready for war like
Speaker 1: I'm Russia slime ball Like yeah, yeah, y'ah, why would I?
Speaker 1: Lion got mob tied and y'all thought Nick Cannon couldn't rap.
Speaker 1: So Look, they're a whole lot of problems with the
Speaker 1: justice system in America, but this is an easy thing.
Speaker 1: Long story short, just stop using lyrics in chord YEA
Speaker 1: that right, but don't use it against me. I was
Speaker 1: just kidding around. Explore more shows from the Daily Show
Speaker 1: podcast universe by searching the Daily Show wherever you get
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