2023-11-30 20:08:25
Donald Trump is not the only personality in Fani Willis’ crosshairs. In addition to worrying the former president for his alleged attempt to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, the prosecutor of Fulton County (an area which covers part of Atlanta and its suburbs) is currently pursuing the star of the rap Jeffery Lamar Williams, aka “Young Thug”. He is accused of leading a murderous gang that raged in the region. His trial began Monday, November 27 in Atlanta.
It is not only the notoriety of the accused, a Grammy winner, the holy grail of musicians, which is attracting attention. Indeed, to obtain his conviction by a popular jury, the prosecutor intends to use the words of some of his songs against him. In his viewfinder, a text from 2018 where he says “I’ve never killed anyone, but I have something to do with this body”. Proof, according to her, that he ordered an assassination.
Elsewhere, the singer poses as a gang leader and evokes “hundreds of rounds (from bullets fired, Editor’s note) in a Tahoe ». Alleged reference to a vehicle where an individual was killed.
An increasingly common process
This surprising process is becoming more and more common in American courthouses, according to Erik Nielson. Co-author of a book on the subject (1), he has counted at least 500 cases in which rap music was used to incriminate an individual, between the early 1990s and 2017. This is the case of Tommy Canady, a young African-American sentenced in 2016 to life in prison for a homicide that he denies having committed.
“Rap lyrics are an easy piece of evidence to sell to a judge or jury because they reinforce stereotypes that many in the justice system or individuals in society have about young men of color: hyper-violence, hyper-sexuality…, explains Erik Nielson. Furthermore, as these words are often expressed in the first person, they have a very powerful impact. Prosecutors can obtain convictions very easily, even if the other pieces of the case are weak. »
The method is debated. Some experts and anti-racist activists worry about its impact on free speech, particularly among non-white artists, who have long used rap and hip-hop to depict the violence in their environments. The states of New York and California adopted laws in 2022 to restrict the use of rap lyrics in legal cases.
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