Man Imprisoned for Murder Based on Rap Videos

Deandre Mitchell (Laz Tha Boy is his rap name) spent two
years behind bars awaiting trial on two counts of attempted murder.
The grand jury that indicted him heard evidence from a prosecutor
who presented three of his rap videos featuring Mitchell rapping
about murder, AK-47s, and pretending to shoot guns with his
hands.

But the rap videos were the strongest evidence against him.
There wasn’t physical evidence connecting him to the crimes and
eyewitness testimony turned out to be flimsy at best. Experts say
that this sort of phenomena is happening all over the United States
where aspiring rappers are having their rap lyrics used against
them. For more read the original post from Nov. 13, 2014:

When Laz Tha Boy threatens to murder someone with an AK-47, it
may seem scary. He proudly mimes shooting handguns towards the
camera in his videos and promises to “leave a … face burgundy,”
when he is finished killing. But he says, it’s an act.

Deandre Mitchell is from Richmond, Calif., and Laz Tha Boy is
his hip-hop rap music persona. Although he says he writes many
different types of rap music, he has found local success in the
Northern California area as a gangsta rapper.

“It was just a way for me to express myself and be able to show
the world that I [could] do something else. Try to give the people
around me the motivation to say we could come from nothing,” said
Mitchell to Reason TV behind a pane of glass at the Martinez
Detention Facility in Martinez, California.

Three of Mitchell’s rap videos (What You Do It
Fo, It’s
Real and Southside
Richmond) became evidence used against him in a 2012 grand jury
proceeding in which he was indicted on two counts of attempted
murder, stemming from two
shootings in Antioch, Calif. His case is like a lot of
other cases springing up around the United States featuring
aspiring rappers who are having their violent rap lyrics used
against them. But nowhere is this phenomenon more prevalent than in
one of gangster rap music’s birthplace, California, where
prosecutors aggressively prosecute gangs.

“It’s supposed to be freedom of speech. So when I use my freedom
of speech and voice my opinion then you all turn around and try and
use it against me like this is who I am as a person,” says
Mitchell.

Even though the videos were made years earlier and didn’t
include specific references to the the shootings at the heart of
the indictment, Satish Jallepalli, a prosecutor with the Contra
Costa County District Attorney’s Office, said the videos illustrate
Mitchell had the mindset to commit such crimes and did so to
benefit Deep C, a criminal street gang in Richmond.

“At the end of the day, yes a person has a First Amendment right
to speak, but when they they commit a crime, sometimes what they
say will end up being used against them,” says Jallepalli.

Since a grand jury proceeding is secret the only way we can
understand what was presented is through transcripts of the
proceeding (Read
an excerpt here). In the grand jury proceeding Jallepalli
pointed to Mitchell’s violent references to murder and AK-47s with
lyrics like, “If I see him I’m gonna murk em” and “When that K-ter
starts sparking it get to jumpin but I’m a grip em.” This was
supposed to illustrate Mitchell’s character but Jallepalli did not
provide context for the lyrics as artistic convention.

“The term murk, rappers use all of the time,” says Charis Kurbrin,
an associate professor of criminology, law and society at the
University of California, Irvine. “If it’s not murk, it’s ‘I’m
gonna smoke him’, ‘I’m going to pop a cap in him’, ‘I’m going to
blaze him’.” Kurbin is the co-author of the paper “Rap
on Trial” in the journal Race and Justice that
details the history and scope of rap music used in criminal
proceedings. She says prosecutors end up using rap lyrics and
videos as evidence because they know the scary effect they will
have on jurors.

“If you think about who is serving in our jury system in the
United States, it’s typically older, higher socioeconomic status,
typically white. They often don’t have the proper context for
understanding rap music,” says Kubrin.

In addition to word play, metaphor, and inverting meaning,
rappers throughout hip-hop’s history from Snoop Dogg to Eminem have
fashioned characters as the vehicle for their violent lyrics.

“Deandre is the family man, I have two kids and everything. But
when I do music, I build my character to be Laz Tha Boy,” says
Mitchell. “If you get around me and really understand me and see
what is going on you see really it’s just an image, it’s not who I
am.”

Mitchell’s lawyer, John Hamasaki, says the use of these rap
videos and lyrics have a prejudicial effect on the young black
males that make up the majority of these types of cases. “I think
that the effect that it has on jurors […] perpetuates certain
myths and stereotypes that are portrayed by the news media of young
African American males being involved in criminal activity,” says
Hamasaki.

Jallepalli, disagrees saying, “The overwhelming majority of
victims of gun violence in gang related cases often tend to be
young minorities, whether African American or Hispanic.”

Kubrin points out that this tactic of using rap lyrics in
criminal proceedings has been going on since the 1990s but there
has been a rise in their use lately because prosecutors have shared
how successful the tactic can be with each other. Back in
2004, Alan Jackson, a former gang prosecutor in Los Angeles, wrote
a guide for
prosecutors for the American Prosecutor’s Research
Institute saying “through photographs, letters, notes, and
even music lyrics, prosecutors can invade and exploit the
defendant’s true personality.”

“You have to find a way to transport the jury to those dark
streets and back alleyways where the crimes occur and the criminals
ply their trade,” says Jackson but offers the caveat that a
prosecution should never solely be built on rap music
lyrics—traditional evidence must accompany it.

Hamasaki says the use of these rap videos and lyrics in the
Mitchell indictment may have blinded jurors from looking at the
lack of physical evidence presented. In fact, the eyewitness
testimony of the victim who said Mitchell was involved in both
attempts on his life ended up to be based on street rumors.

While the victim told grand jurors that he saw Mitchell at both
shootings, he also told Antioch police in a taped interview that
what he knew was based on rumors he had heard around Richmond
(View
two pages of the interview). He signed a declaration in August
2014, saying “I never saw Deandre Mitchell during either of the
shootings” and my previous statements about Mitchell were just
“based on rumors I had heard in Richmond,” (View
document here).

View this article.