{"id":530608,"date":"2026-03-12T04:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530608\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T04:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:04:14","slug":"travis-scott-t-i-tell-supreme-court-tying-lyrics-to-death-sentence-unconstitutional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530608\/","title":{"rendered":"Travis Scott, T.I. Tell Supreme Court Tying Lyrics to Death Sentence Unconstitutional"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Travis Scott<\/a> and a handful of artists are jumping to the defense of a Black man in Texas whose rap lyrics were cited during his sentencing for a double murder … which landed him on death row, but the rappers believe using lyrics to impose capital punishment is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

James Broadnax was 19-years old when he killed two white men during a robbery in Garland, Texas … and in 2009, a nearly all-white jury convicted him and decided he deserved the death penalty.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors introduced Broadnax’s handwritten rap lyrics as evidence only after he was convicted — during the sentencing phase — and during deliberation, the jury twice asked to see 40 pages of Broadnax’s lyrics.<\/p>\n

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TMZ.com<\/p>\n

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Prosecutors said the “general theme” of the lyrics were “robbing, killing and selling dope” … they told the jury his lyrics proved he was a continuing threat to society who would probably commit more violent crimes in the future, and the jury sentenced him to death.<\/p>\n

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\"Travis<\/p>\n

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Broadnax is scheduled for execution April 30, but his lawyers are asking the Supreme Court to press pause and review his case.<\/p>\n

Travis’ lawyer Alex Spiro filed an amicus brief with SCOTUS arguing the use of rap lyrics in Broadnax’s trial was essentially a penalty against rap music.<\/p>\n

His brief says … “The prosecutors argued Mr. Broadnax was likely to be dangerous in the future simply because he engaged in \u2018gangster rap.’ Such an argument functionally operates as a categorical and straightforwardly unconstitutional content-based penalty on rap music as a form of expression.”<\/p>\n

Travis’ legal team added … “At a certain level of abstraction, the reality is even more problematic: taking rap\u00a0music\u00a0out of context subjects the entire genre to prosecution.”<\/p>\n

T.I.<\/a>, Young Thug<\/a>, Killer Mike<\/a> and Fat Joe<\/a> also signed onto briefs telling SCOTUS it’s BS to use the guy’s lyrics against him.<\/p>\n

SCOTUS has yet to rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Scott and a handful of artists are jumping to the defense of a Black man in Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[879,49,48,75,12891,341,44,12892],"class_list":["post-530608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-hip-hop","tag-music","tag-news","tag-tmz-hip-hop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}