Photo: Getty Images
Travis Scott, T.I., and numerous other artists and scholars are coming to the defense of a Texas man whose rap lyrics were used to sentence him to death row.
In an amicus brief Scott's legal team filed on Monday, March 9, the Houston native appealed the death sentence of James Garfield Broadnax to the Supreme Court. Broadnax, who is Black, was only 19 when he was convicted of killing two white men in the Garland area in 2009 and was later sentenced to death by lethal injection. According to the New York Times, prosecutors turned over 40 pages of Broadnax's rap lyrics after he was convicted by a primarily white jury.
“The manner in which prosecutors presented rap lyrics written by petitioner James Garfield Broadnax, a Black man, to an almost all-white jury during his capital sentencing hearing presents an ideal vehicle for addressing this issue because the prosecutors’ conduct here was particularly egregious,” Scott’s brief reads, per Complex. “The prosecutors argued Mr. Broadnax was likely to be dangerous in the future simply because he engaged in ‘gangster rap.’ Such an argument functionally operates as a categorical and straightforwardly unconstitutional content-based penalty on rap music as a form of expression.”
The jury reviewed the lyrics twice before Broadnax was sentenced to death instead of life without parole. However, attorneys for the now 37-year-old man recently filed a brief calling for a “Writ of Certiorari." If approved, the order would mandate SCOTUS to review the lower court’s decision. In addition to the filing, Scott, along with other artists like T.I., Killer Mike, Young Thug and others, encouraged the Supreme Court to “clarify the constitutional limits” of using elements of speech, including rap lyrics, that are protected by the First Amendment.
"The State used Broadnax’s artistic expression in the punishment phase to portray him as living and pursuing a ‘gangster’ lifestyle that made him a continuing criminal and violent danger to the community,” Scott wrote.
Using rap lyrics against artists in court has been a hot topic of discussion over the years, but it was amplified last year thanks to the YSL RICO trial involving Young Thug and his co-defendants. The indictment against Thug cited lyrics from songs like "Anybody" and "Bad Boy" as legal evidence to prove he committed various crimes. At the time, music executives like Kevin Liles advocated for lyrics to be excluded from court cases by signing a petition and supporting legislation that would've banned the practice at the state and federal levels.
Broadnax is scheduled to be executed on April 30.