A California appeals court overturned the murder conviction on the grounds that the rap video was harmful

A Cal­i­for­nia appeals court over­turned the mur­der con­vic­tion of an alleged gang mem­ber, rul­ing that pros­e­cu­tors mis­used the rap video as evidence.

Travon Rashad Ven­able, 34, is being held at the Cali­pa­tria State Pen­i­ten­tiary pend­ing pros­e­cu­tors decid­ing whether to retry the mur­der of Enon “Bub­ba” Edwards, who was shot in the head on March 5, 2014.

Ven­able was con­vict­ed of being behind the wheel of a shoot­ing near Med­ical Cen­ter Dri­ve and West Union Street in San Bernardi­no, about 100 kilo­me­ters east of down­town Los Angeles.

Jurors were shown a YouTube rap video fea­tur­ing Ven­able’s broth­er “Young Trocc” and fea­tur­ing Ven­able and oth­er mem­bers of the Cal­i­for­nia Gar­dens Crips gang, court records show.

“They were seen hold­ing up gang signs and dis­play­ing guns, drugs and mon­ey,” accord­ing to a state appeals court rul­ing issued on Feb­ru­ary 17.

At one point, Ven­able was hold­ing a rifle with an extend­ed mag­a­zine. One of the rap phras­es was, “I’ve been told by a bird[] that they done it [racial slur] real bad/Slid up Med­ical and left that [racial slur] head gone.” ”

A gang expert tes­ti­fied that the footage showed a “Cal­i­for­nia Gar­dens mem­ber shot anoth­er in the head at a med­ical cen­ter” and that the group “claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the mur­der. It says.

Last fall, Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som enact­ed a law restrict­ing pros­e­cu­tors from using such music in cases.

King Charles III choos­es France and Ger­many for his first state vis­it
Rap­pers Killer Mike, Meek Mill, Too $hort, Ty Dol­la $ign, YG, E‑40 and Tyga attend­ed a vir­tu­al sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny to endorse New­som’s move.

“There is no ques­tion that the pre­sid­ing judge’s admis­sion of rap evi­dence in this case is incon­sis­tent with the new require­ments for the admis­si­bil­i­ty of cre­ative expres­sion,” the Court of Appeals said.

There is also con­sid­er­able con­cern that admis­sion of evi­dence may have had the exact effect the leg­is­la­ture sought to avoid. Rap videos con­tain offen­sive lan­guage, includ­ing fre­quent use of the N‑word, depic­tions of guns and drugs, and ref­er­ences to vio­lent gang activ­i­ty. Most of the peo­ple in the videos are young black men.”

Accord­ing to the appeals court, Ven­able had been sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment since 129. He should have been eli­gi­ble for parole in Octo­ber 2048, accord­ing to state prison records.

Ben­able’s attor­neys and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the San Bernardi­no Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney’s Office were not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able for com­ment Fri­day morning.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*