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Pennsylvania Supreme Court: Rap song equals punishable true threat

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Os Trigonum, Aug 21, 2018.

  1. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Member
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    Case was just decided today. Volokh provides a factual summary and relevant legal reasoning from the decision: http://reason.com/volokh/2018/08/21/rap-song-punishable-true-threat-says-pen

    the link to the decision provided by Volokh doesn't work, here is a link to the full decision: http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/j-83-2018mo.pdf#search="commonwealth v. knox"

    Excerpt:

    The opinion (Commonwealth v. Knox) is long, and so are the underlying lyrics; you can read it in full. But here is a quick summary of the facts:

    In April 2012, Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Kosko initiated a routine traffic stop of a vehicle driven by Appellant. Appellant's co-defendant, Rashee Beasley, was in the front passenger seat. While Officer Kosko was questioning Appellant, the latter sped away, ultimately crashing his vehicle. He and Beasley fled on foot, but were quickly apprehended and placed under arrest. The police found fifteen stamp bags containing heroin and a large sum of cash on Appellant's person, as well as a loaded, stolen firearm on the driver's-side floor of the vehicle. At the scene of the arrest, Appellant gave the police a false name. When Detective Daniel Zeltner, who was familiar with both Appellant and Beasley, arrived, he informed the officers that Appellant's real name was Jamal Knox.

    Based on these events, Appellant and Beasley were charged with a number of offenses. Officer Kosko and Detective Zeltner, both of Zone 5 of the Pittsburgh Police Department, were scheduled to testify against them in connection with the charges.

    While the charges were pending, Appellant and Beasley wrote and recorded a rap song entitled, "F--k the Police," which was put on video with still photos of Appellant and Beasley displayed in a montage. In the photos, the two are looking into the camera and motioning as if firing weapons. The video was uploaded to YouTube by a third party, and the YouTube link was placed on a publicly-viewable Facebook page entitled "Beaz Mooga," which the trial evidence strongly suggested belonged to Beasley.

    The song's lyrics express hatred toward the Pittsburgh police. As well, they contain descriptions of killing police informants and police officers. In this latter regard, the lyrics refer to Officer Kosko and Detective Zeltner by name. They suggest Appellant and Beasley know when those officers' shifts end and that the crimes depicted in the song may occur in the officers' homes ("where you sleep"). The lyrics also contain a reference to Richard Poplawski, who several years earlier had strapped himself with weapons and murdered three Pittsburgh police officers. Finally, the song includes background sounds of gunfire and police sirens....​

    The court concluded that, under the Supreme Court's Virginia v. Black decision, statements are constitutionally unprotected "true threats" if they are "specifically intended to terrorize or intimidate," in light of their content and the context in which they were made. (The court concluded that "It remains an open question whether a statute which criminalizes threatening statements spoken with a lower scienter threshold, such as knowledge or reckless disregard of their threatening nature, can survive First Amendment scrutiny"; a two-Justice partial concurrence and partial dissent would have resolved that question in favor of finding that specific intent to threaten was indeed required.) The trial court below found that Knox's statements were indeed so intended, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed that this made sense in light of their content and context. . . .
    ​
    more at the link
     
    #1 Os Trigonum, Aug 21, 2018
  2. Svpernaut

    Svpernaut Member

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    If you ask Tupac and Biggie's families... they'd probably agree. A threat isn't a threat, just because it's put to a beat. I am a staunch defender of the 1st Amendment, but if you threaten someone, you threaten someone.
     
    #2 Svpernaut, Aug 21, 2018
  3. Rocket River

    Rocket River Member

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    So this goes for any medium?
    Books, Poems, TV, . . .fiction or not . . .all threats are credible. . . . right?

    Rocket River
     
    #3 Rocket River, Aug 21, 2018
  4. CometsWin

    CometsWin Breaker Breaker One Nine

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    Of course. That's why Martin Scorsese is in prison.
     
    #4 CometsWin, Aug 21, 2018
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  5. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Member
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    #5 Os Trigonum, Aug 22, 2018
  6. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Member

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    I don't think anyone said all threats are credible. It sounds like there are several elements here that make it a specific and terroristic threat (like naming the arresting officers) while a more generic shoot-the-pigs rap wouldn't necessarily be.
     
    #6 JuanValdez, Aug 22, 2018
  7. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Member

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    I heard something similar on the Hidden Brain podcast. The professor at the end made an interesting point where if the violent lyrics were sung like a folk or country song, the prosecution and sentencing rate was far lower.
    Rap on Trial: How An Aspiring Musician's Words Led To Prison Time
    Olutosin Oduwole was in his dorm room at Southern Illinois University when police knocked on his door one day in 2007. They were there to arrest him.

    "In my mind I'm thinking, 'Okay, maybe a warrant for a ticket.' I really didn't know what was going on," he says.

    Rap on Trial
    What was going on was that the police suspected that Olutosin, a college student and aspiring rapper, was on the brink of committing a Virginia Tech-style mass shooting on his campus. He was soon charged with attempting to make a terrorist threat, and was eventually convicted and sent to prison.

    That conviction was later overturned by an appeals court, but to prosecutors, the case remains a clear example of a tragedy averted. To Tosin and his supporters, however, his prosecution was a fool's errand — an example of bias in how people perceive rappers and rap music.

    This week on Hidden Brain, we'll meet Tosin and explore his case from all sides. We'll also consider what criminologist Charis Kubrin sees as a troubling rise in prosecutions that use rap lyrics to bolster claims that a defendant is violent.

    Additional Reading:

    You can find more resources on the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials at the website of our guest Charis Kubrin. It includes a list of legal advisers, testimonies by rappers who have been taken to court over song lyrics, and scholarly research.

    A 2011 newspaper article announcing Olutosin's five year prison sentence for making a "terrorist threat."​
     
    #7 Invisible Fan, Aug 22, 2018
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  8. Amiga

    Amiga Member

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    Title is off. Specific enough threats equal punishable true threats. But rap song elicits negative connotation, so I get the usage, omission and bias.
     
    #8 Amiga, Aug 22, 2018
  9. No Worries

    No Worries Member

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    * Unless you are President and then you can threaten as you see fit.
     
    #9 No Worries, Aug 23, 2018
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  10. Rocket River

    Rocket River Member

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    Bias lives in those 'elements'
    The #1 fault and underlining vile evilness of 'our justice' system is .. . . SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT
    The ability of cops, prosecutors and judges to selectively dole out 'justices' is why we have so much inequilty of conviction/imprisonment/sentencing

    White Woman gets warning hispanic man gets years of prison for the same crime (See pedophile women threads)
    White male rapist gets probation . .. . . etc etc etc

    Cops use bias to see who gets stopped/ticketed/arrested
    Prosecutors bias is in what crime you charged with/ what kind of plea bargain you gets and sentencing recommendations
    Judges bias shows in how they allow the trials to do, sentencing and parole

    This is why I have little faith in 'Crime Statistics' . .the inherrent bias in the system makes them reflect the bias of the system
    which they try to use to justify their behaviors and biases

    Rocket River
     
    #10 Rocket River, Aug 23, 2018
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  11. Pole

    Pole Houston Rockets--Tilman Fertitta's latest mess.

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    They name the cops in the song and what they claim they're gonna do to them. If "terroristic threats" are against the law, then it seems pretty cut and dried. Don't really see how this could be compared to a movie or another medium.........unless the Director stepped in front of the camera and said he was going to kill a particular individual. Or an author inserted their own persona into a piece of literature and wrote that they were going to kill a particular person.
     
    #11 Pole, Aug 23, 2018
  12. edwardc

    edwardc Member

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    So ted nugent should also be arrested and put in jail.

    https://www.rollingstone.com/music/...ry-clinton-during-vicious-onstage-rant-94687/
     
    #12 edwardc, Aug 23, 2018
  13. Pole

    Pole Houston Rockets--Tilman Fertitta's latest mess.

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    Probably......."suck on my machine gun" is a bit more vague in terms of threats, but he was talking about a president.
     
    #13 Pole, Aug 23, 2018
  14. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Member

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    Sure, I believe that bias and prosecutorial discretion results in prejudicial punishments. I don't think that means a prosecution of an individual is fundamentally illegitimate though. It doesn't mean all the very specific stuff about how they named these particular officers they had a beef with and threatened to kill them in their homes is just made up. I'd probably feel differently if they left the names out and you could construe the song as reflecting on a wider frustration people feel with law enforcement that makes them want to fight back. But you put the names of individuals you know in the song, it is very reasonable to assume they feel threatened, and not too great a leap that the rapper intended that they feel threatened. And, if it would have gone unprosecuted had they just produced the threat in an acoustic sixties folk song, well the fault would be in not prosecuting credible threats. (As for Nugent, it sounded to me more like he was sexually propositioning the president, maybe he wants the bbc, but whatever.)
     
    #14 JuanValdez, Aug 23, 2018
  15. Rocket River

    Rocket River Member

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    Threatened people. . . Threaten people

    This law is basically a THREAT . . . .back by the power of the whole government
    Bias comes in when they get to decide what is and is not a threat

    Watch the selective enforcement start to roll out

    Rocket River
     
    #15 Rocket River, Aug 23, 2018
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