Bill would shield artists, musicians
Senators craft measure to prevent defendants’ lyrics from being used against them in court
A pair of state senators from New York City, citing the case of a Maryland man sentenced to prison for murder, have proposed legislation that would ban a defendant’s music lyrics from being used as evidence against the defendant in criminal cases.
State Sens. Brad Hoylman, D -Manhattan, and Jamaal Bailey, D -Bronx, on Wednesday introduced a bill titled “Rap Music on Trial” that they said would “enhance the free speech protections of New Yorkers by banning the use of art created by a defendant as evidence against them in a courtroom.”
“The legislation will protect all artists and content creators, including rappers, from having their lyrics wielded against them by prosecutors,” they said in a statement announcing the bill.
In January, a Maryland appeals court allowed prosecutors to use rap lyrics sung by Lawrence Montague as evidence against him at trial. Montague sang the incendiary lyrics while using a jail telephone and the person he was speaking to recorded it and later posted it on social media. Montague was convicted of killing a man during a drug deal and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.
Hoylman and Bailey also invoked the 2019 case of artist Daniel Hernandez, known as “Tekashi69,” whose rap lyrics they said were used to compel him to become a government witness in order to avoid a harsher sentence.
The lawmakers said their bill would “guarantee freedom of creative expression in New York by prohibiting prosecutors from using creative expression as criminal evidence against a person without clear and convincing proof that there is a literal, factual nexus between the creative expression and the facts of the case.”
“Art is creative expression, not a blueprint of criminal plans,” Hoylman said. “It’s time to end the egregious bias against certain genres of music, like rap, and protect the First Amendment rights of all artists.”
Bailey said that “free speech is enshrined in our federal and state constitutions because it is through this right that we can preserve all of our other fundamental rights. The admission of art as criminal evidence only serves to erode this fundamental right, and the use of rap and hip-hop lyrics in particular is emblematic of the systemic racism that permeates our criminal justice system.”
The bill would create rules requiring a “valid nexus between the speech sought to be admitted into evidence and the crime alleged.”