{"id":15222,"date":"2019-02-02T01:46:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T01:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15222"},"modified":"2019-02-03T01:48:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T01:48:33","slug":"rap-music-and-threats-of-violence-a-case-for-the-supreme-court-to-decide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/rap-music-and-threats-of-violence-a-case-for-the-supreme-court-to-decide\/","title":{"rendered":"Rap music and threats of violence: A case for the Supreme Court to decide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clay Calvert<\/a>, University of Florida<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Kendrick Lamar<\/a> won a Pulitzer Prize<\/a> last year and Eminem set a record<\/a> in 2019 for streams on Spotify. But the acceptance and embrace of rap music in mainstream culture isn\u2019t shared by everyone \u2013 and that sometimes includes the police. <\/p>\n

Controversy between the police and rappers has gone on at least since N.W.A. released \u201cF\u2013k tha Police<\/a>\u201d in 1988. In fact, scholars<\/a> Charis E. Kubrin and Erik Nielson contend that \u201cto this day, rap is largely defined by its hostility toward law enforcement.\u201d <\/p>\n

Now the Supreme Court<\/a>, including one justice nicknamed \u201cthe Notorious RBG<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a reference to the rapper<\/a> called \u201cNotorious B.I.G.\u201d \u2013 has been asked to address that hostility and what it means via the case of Knox v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project<\/a> at the University of Florida, I\u2019ve often written about<\/a> the complex relationship between rap music, free speech and threats of violence.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has discretion not to take the case. It could decide whether to do so within the next few weeks. If it does choose to hear the case, it could have profound implications for freedom of speech in the United States. That\u2019s because it concerns when people can go to prison for making statements that some considering threatening. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan ruled in a 1971 free speech case that \u2018One man\u2019s vulgarity is another\u2019s lyric.\u2019<\/span>
\n AP file photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Protected or not?<\/h2>\n

Last August, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court<\/a> upheld<\/a> Jamal Knox\u2019s conviction on the charge of making terroristic threats<\/a> against two Pittsburgh police officers in a rap song he posted on YouTube. <\/p>\n

Taking a page out of N.W.A.\u2018s playbook, he had also called his song \u201cF\u2013k the Police\u201d and directed it at the officers, who had earlier arrested<\/a> him and another rapper on drug charges.<\/p>\n

So what did Knox say in his rap that was interpreted as a threat and landed him in trouble with the law? Here\u2019s a snippet in which he names the two officers:<\/p>\n

This first verse is for Officer Zeltner and all you fed force b\u2014-es\/And Mr. Kosko, you can suck my d\u2013k you keep on knocking my riches\/You want beef, well cracker I\u2019m wit it, that whole department can get it\/All these soldiers in my committee gonna f\u2013k over you b\u2014-es\/F\u2013k the, f\u2013k the police, b\u2013ch, I said it loud.<\/em><\/p>\n

This may offend, but as the Supreme Court wrote<\/a> in 2017, \u201cspeech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.\u201d For example, the Court protected the right to protest<\/a> the Vietnam War by wearing a jacket reading \u201cF\u2013k the Draft\u201d in a public courthouse. <\/p>\n

Knox now wants the nation\u2019s highest court to hear his case. He argues his lyrics constitute free speech protected by the First Amendment<\/a> to the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

While the First Amendment safeguards many types of speech, the Supreme Court holds that it does not protect true threats of violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The problem is that the Court has not clearly defined just what constitutes a \u201ctrue threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said elsewhere<\/a>, \u201cif there\u2019s one First Amendment doctrine that screams out the loudest for clarification, it may well be true threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question in the Knox case is not whether the speech offends, but whether it is an unlawful threat of violence. <\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded<\/a> it was a threat, partly because Jamal Knox identified specific officers by name and because the lyrics included the line \u201clet\u2019s kill these cops cuz they don\u2019t do us no good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this a threat or just a young man in his 20s venting anger at government officials through a creative medium known for such rhetoric?<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s opportunity<\/h2>\n

As Knox\u2019s attorneys argue in their Supreme Court brief<\/a>, the Court has not clarified \u201cwhether, to establish that a statement is an unprotected ‘true threat,\u2019 the government must show objectively that a \u2018reasonable person\u2019 would regard the statement as threatening, or whether it is enough to prove only the speaker\u2019s subjective intent to threaten.\u201d <\/p>\n

In other words, the lawyers are asking if the test of whether something is a true threat should be how a reasonable person would interpret a message like a rap song. Or does the actual intent of the speaker make a difference? Or is it some combination of both? <\/p>\n

And if the state of the mind of the speaker does matter, does he just have to be aware that some people might find it threatening or does he actually need to want people to find it threatening?<\/p>\n

These are difficult but important questions. People sometimes say things that are not intended to be taken literally. <\/p>\n

A jury, in turn, may be confused in sorting it all out.<\/p>\n

This is particularly true with rap music. As one scholarly article by Adam Dunbar and Charis E. Kubrin<\/a> notes, \u201cjurors may not understand or fully appreciate rap music\u2019s genre conventions and instead may conflate an artist\u2019s lyrics with his or her true personality.\u201d <\/p>\n

A scholarly experiment by Dunbar, Kubrin and Nicholas Scurich<\/a> suggests that the exact same lyrics were taken more literally by participants \u201cwhen characterized as rap compared with country.\u201d <\/p>\n

Technology compounds the problem. Some people may expect to find hyperbole or exaggerated expression on certain online forums such as Twitter. We live in an age of instant outrage<\/a> on social media, and sometimes that outrage may appear threatening.<\/p>\n

The danger is that a person could wind up in prison for something he intended as a joke but that a recipient interpreted differently.<\/p>\n

Resolving what constitutes a true threat and just how a true threat should be determined has importance far beyond rap music. It extends to tweets, texts and Facebook posts in the digital age. <\/p>\n

With Jamal Knox\u2019s case, the Supreme Court can use the opportunity to clarify what constitutes an unprotected threat of violence. <\/p>\n

The Court, however, typically hears only about 80 cases<\/a> each year involving full oral argument before the justices. <\/p>\n

I believe that this case is important and should be heard because, as Knox\u2019s attorneys argue, the definition of a true threat \u201cimplicates the validity of countless convictions under myriad federal and state threat statutes.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n

Clay Calvert<\/a>, Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication, University of Florida<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clay Calvert, University of Florida Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize last year and Eminem set a record in 2019 for streams on Spotify. But the acceptance and embrace of rap music in mainstream culture isn\u2019t shared by everyone \u2013 and that sometimes includes the police. Controversy between the police and rappers has gone on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[2254,1614,1896,2545,708],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15223,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222\/revisions\/15223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}