When may rap lyrics written by a defendant be admitted as evidence of guilt? That question has been in the news quite a bit lately as a result of a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court. (For example, see this ABC News story, or this Washington Post piece.) There’s also some North Carolina authority on point, so I thought the topic was worth a post. The Nevada ruling. The Nevada case is Holmes v. State, __ P.3d __, 2013 WL 4477058 (Nev. Aug. 22, 2013). The defendant and his accomplices lured a drug dealer to a recording studio for the purpose of robbing him. The defendant, who was wearing a ski mask, attacked the victim, beat him, turned his pockets inside out, ripped off his necklace, and shot and killed him. The defendant was eventually arrested and charged with murder. While in jail, he wrote a number of rap songs, one of which was titled Drug Deala. It included the following lyrics: “I catching slipping at the club and jack you for your necklace. . . . Man I’m parking lot jacking, running through your pockets with uh ski mask on straight laughing.” The state sought to introduce the lyrics, and the trial court admitted the evidence, though with a limiting instruction that the lyrics could be viewed as “confessions, admissions, or neither,” and shouldn’t be used to conclude that the defendant was a bad person with a propensity to commit crimes. The defendant was convicted and appealed, and a divided [...]
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