Killer Mike, Young Thug and others petition Supreme Court in death sentence of man who had rap lyrics used against him in court

The usage of lyrics to condemn a man to death is wrong. Rappers like Killer Mike who articulates the nature of the game well showed his prowess with the legal documents.

He made it plain that art should not be employed as evidence in court cases. The way that court systems work is to protect the First Amendment rights of people on trial.

It is something that doesn’t have to be. It brings to the fore the idea that rap is still an easy target for the courts to say that words can be used from artistry.

But plays, novels, screenplays, operas—do they get the same treatment. It’s like heavy metal lyrics as well. They are often used to justify condemning artists and others because of suicide deaths. With rap it's almost exclusively murder cases.

In the way that this has transpired, the thought of putting a man to death this time James Broadnax, who was convicted in 2009 is being sentenced to death with the aid of his own lyrics to satisfy the prosecution.

In an era where rap has ascended to heights people may have never expected it to achieve. TI and Young Thug have been part of the solution to spare Broadnax’s life. In the same way as rappers must protect their words the State ought to protect them.

For them all to be so gung ho to keep this man alive is a rational, selfish, and thoroughly moral act. The reality of sentencing a man to death for what he wrote for a rap song is embarrassing. As broken as the legal system is, it stoops to lower levels of understanding when it comes to involving lyrics in a case.

Considering the amount of work put into the lyricism of street rappers, does that mean that each body dropped in a song should be scrutinized? Where is the line drawn?

How does the individual take on the artists’ prerogative to write whatever he or she wants without worrying about the notion of whether their words could be brought against them in the law courts?

Will we see the day when all lyrics will be viewed as possible evidence? The entirety of the song catalog for some rappers could be condemned to life or death sentences. Depending on what they say in songs should not be a reason to disrupt their life. Because of all the perceived power of the medium of rap, it is the amount of people that fight for these laws to go away that stands up against this kind of tyranny.

It is a travesty that artists must be put to death based on their abilities. Their special talents to paint vivid tales may be lurid and dangerous on a level of artistry even but not unlawful. That’s the reality of being in the rsp game. The irony is that some rappers leave criminality to go “straight” and end up becoming in the center of the storm for the work they did to escape the streets.

The law courts are fractured because of this whole situation. There’s a way to paint rappers as awful, but there should be no room for prosecutors to regard them as “super predators” based on the lyrics they draw.

It’s the most important thing in the world: life. For someone’s lyricism to pencil in their date with death ought to be forever cast to the garbage can of legal proceedings. It should come as no surprise that it is black music that does most of the men and women in for the most part. If we’re going to keep going with the idea that people take their own lives it is of chief significance that we note that words in a song are just that and nothing more.