A rap song written and performed by a Brooklyn man who was in jail at Rikers Island was wrongly used as evidence against him, and his criminal conviction must be reversed, a Brooklyn appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The trial court incorrectly allowed Idrissa Reaves’ song to be admitted into evidence and analyzed by a court-qualified “expert in slang” hired by the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, Justice Barry E. Warhit of the New York Supreme Court Second Appellate Department said.
The expert’s “initial interpretations of the lyrics were often varied and reflected the lyrics’ inherent ambiguity,” yet “precisely and remarkably mirrored the People’s exact factual theory of the case,” Warhit wrote.
Courts “have recognized that rap music is a form of artistic expression that often contains nonliteral references to criminality and illicit conduct,” and they have cautioned against improperly using songs as evidence, the judge said.
Reaves in 2019 was found guilty by a jury of aiding in the murder of Nashon Henry, who was shot in a drive-by where Reaves drove the car. The shooter was never identified or apprehended.
Prosecutors, after being given 10 minutes during a pre-trial conference to find someone to put on the stand as their slang expert, chose Detective Investigator Kolawole Olosunde. Appellate court judges said Olosunde, who worked in the Special Investigations Unit at the district attorney’s office, “had never previously been qualified as an expert in ‘street lingo.’” Nevertheless, he testified he had was familiar with some of the terms used in Reaves’ phone calls from Rikers Island, including the one where he rapped.
Olosunde provided a line-by-line interpretation of Reaves’ profanity-laced song, which made references to stolen credit cards and helping with a shooting, according to the investigator.
One verse that said, “so he ply him with the chrome,” was interpreted as Reaves supplying the shooter with a gun, which Warhit said was notably “once again in complete accord with the People’s theory of accomplice liability.”
Olosunde also testified that Reaves’ use of the word “swipe” meant fraudulent use of a credit card or EBT card, although there “was no charge in this case relating to the illegal use or possession of credit cards, and this testimony was entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether the defendant knew the shooter intended to kill the victim,” the opinion said.
The detective acknowledged during cross-examination that deciphering rap lyrics was different from interpreting regular conversations and that lyrics could have double meanings. He also noted that on the recorded phone call, Reaves indicated his son had helped write some of the lyrics.
“The admission of the investigator’s testimony concerning his interpretation of the rap song was the People’s only direct evidence of the defendant’s mental state prior to the shooting. Without the investigator’s testimony, the People failed to establish the relevancy of the rap lyrics to the circumstances of this case,” Warhit said.
