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An Atlanta judge ruled Thursday that he would allow many of Young Thug’s rap lyrics to be used as evidence against him and other alleged gang members in their upcoming criminal trial, rejecting arguments that doing so would violate the First Amendment.
The ruling came a day after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville held a hotly-anticipated hearing about the use of lyrics as evidence – a controversial practice that has drawn backlash from the music industry and efforts by lawmakers to stop it.
The lyrics could play a key role in the trial, which will kick off later this month. Prosecutors allege that Thug (Jeffery Williams) and his “YSL” were not really a popular music collective called “Young Stoner Life,” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life” that committed murders, carjackings, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
Representing the superstar artist, attorney Brian Steel blasted prosecutors for attempting to use creative expression to convict his client. “They are targeting the right to free speech, and that’s wrong,” Steel said. “They are saying that just because he his singing about it, he is now part of a crime.”
But after an hours-long hearing that ran until nearly 9 pm on Wednesday evening, Judge Glanville largely rejected those arguments. “They’re not prosecuting your clients because of the songs they wrote,” Glanville said from the bench. “They’re using the songs to prove other things your clients may have been involved in. I don’t think it’s an attack on free speech.”
In a formal ruling on Thursday morning, the judge denied Thug’s request to ban the lyrics entirely, and granted a motion by prosecutors to preliminarily admit them. Though Judge Glanville said prosecutors would still need to establish why they were using them and that Steel could object during the trial, the judge repeatedly suggested at Wednesday’s hearing that he would allow lyrics to be admitted as evidence and that it would be up to jurors to decide how much weight to give them.
At the hearing, prosecutor Michael Carlson urged Judge Glanville to avoid sweeping questions about free speech. He said the actual issue before the court was not rap lyrics but rather “proclamations of violence” by alleged gang members that are “highly relevant in this case.”
“The issue here is not rap,” Carlson said. “This is not randomly the state attempting to bring in Run DMC from the 80s. This is specific. These are party admissions. They just happen come in the form of lyrics.”
Near the end of the hearing, Carlson sharply criticized the suggestion that the rap lyrics in question were simply works of art without a direct link to real events. “People can look at that indictment and see one thing that’s for sure not fantasy: People are dead. Murdered.”
“That’s not fantasy, your honor,” Carlson said. “That’s tragically real.”
Earlier on Wednesday, prosecutor Symone Hylton highlighted specific lyrics that the state plans to play for jurors during the trial and explained why they were relevant enough to be admitted. They included lines from Thug’s 2016 song “Slime Shit,” in which he raps about “killin’ 12 shit” and “hundred rounds in a Tahoe.”
Hylton argued that “12” is a well-known euphemism for police officers, and that the lyric referred to a specific incident in which an officer was shot by a YSL member. And she said that the “Tahoe” lyric was a boast about the 2015 murder of Donovan Thomas – a key allegation in the indictment.
“Not only did Donovan Thomas drive a Tahoe, there were multiple rounds of shell casings laid out on the ground where he was killed in front of his barber shop,” Hylton said. “While [the lyric] may on the surface seem irrelevant, when you put it to the facts that are going to come out in this case, that particular verse becomes very relevant.”
Among other songs, she also referenced the 2018 track “Anybody,” in which Thug raps “I never killed anybody/ But I got somethin’ to do with that body”; and the song “Really Be Slime,” a 2021 compilation track released by Young Stoner Life Records that features the line “You wanna be slime? Go catch you a body.”
“It’s the state’s contention that [the lyric] means you go out and you go murder someone,” Hylton said. “That’s how you become ‘slime’.”
Young Thug, Gunna and dozens of other alleged YSL members were indicted in May 2022. Gunna and several other defendants eventually reached plea deals, and other defendants were separated from the main case, leaving just Thug and five others to face a jury. If fully convicted, he could face a life sentence.
After months of delays, a jury was finally seated last week, clearing the way for the trial to kick off on Nov. 27 – proceedings that are expected to last well into 2024. But before then, Judge Ural Glanville must decide on whether the jury can hear his lyrics as part of the prosecution’s case.
Civil liberties activists and defense attorneys have long criticized the use of rap lyrics to win criminal convictions. They argue that it unfairly targets constitutionally protected speech, treating hyperbolic verse as literal confessions; they also say it can unfairly sway juries by tapping into racial biases.
Lawmakers in California enacted legislation last year restricting the use of creative expression as evidence in criminal cases, and a federal bill in Congress that would impose similar restrictions has been widely supported by the music industry. But absent such statutes, courts around the country have mostly upheld the right of prosecutors to cite rap lyrics, particularly in gang-related cases.
In his arguments Wednesday, Thug’s lawyer Steel echoed such concerns in pushing to exclude the lyrics from the case. He noted that many other artists had used similar phrases – he name-dropped Rick Ross, Meek Mill and Cardi B — and that rap lyrics are often exaggerated or wholly fictional. Steel argued that individual lyrics should only be admitted when prosecutors have linked them much more specifically to actual alleged actions – an analysis he said the DA’s office had failed to perform.
But Steel’s main message for Judge Glanville was that using the lyrics would violate the First Amendment and its protections for free speech, arguing that it would effectively criminalize the output of a “prolific songwriter.”
“A person in America can say I hate Brian Steel, I hate criminal defense lawyers, I hate prosecutors, I hate judges,” Steel said. “We believe that we flourish when we can share ideas even when they’re repugnant, even when you don’t agree with them.”
“If you allow this evidence,” Steel said, “it’s going to have a chilling effect.”
But Judge Glanville was skeptical of Steel’s arguments from the beginning, repeatedly suggesting that he believed some of the lyrics were relevant enough to be admitted in the case — and occasionally showing frustration with Steel’s arguments to the contrary. At one point, he interrupted Steel to say that “the First Amendment is not on trial.”
Later, Steel said that prosecutors were using Thug’s “words” to convince jurors that he was “a bad man” — the kind of improper “character” evidence that is typically rejected. But Judge Glanville again had a quick retort: “No they’re not. They’re using his words to show that he’s involved in a gang.”
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With Young Thug’s gang trial set to start later this month, Atlanta prosecutors are defending their plans to cite his rap lyrics as evidence against him — including by arguing that a manifesto written by the infamous Unabomber would not be inadmissible in court merely if it had been “set to music.”
Thug’s lawyers say his music should be off-limits at the upcoming trial, echoing widespread criticism that the tactic violates the First Amendment and unfairly sways juries. But with a judge set to decide that issue this week, prosecutors aren’t exactly shying away from the controversial practice.
In a motion filed Friday (Nov. 3), the Fulton County District Attorney’s office argued that the lyrics are clearly fair game because they allegedly show Thug (real name Jeffery Williams) and others admitting to being members of a criminal enterprise called YSL — the very crime they’re accused of committing.
“Gang lyric evidence pertaining to the predicate offenses, YSL, its rivals, expectations, and behaviors are all highly pertinent to the defendants’ states of mind and intent in this case,” the DA’s office wrote. “The defendants associated with YSL for criminal purposes.”
In making those arguments, prosecutors also attacked the broader claim that rap music is often unfairly targeted in criminal cases. They accused Thug’s lawyers of seeking an unreasonable “genre-based blanket exclusion” against any evidence that was set “to a beat” — an outcome they said would lead to “an absurd result.” To illustrate how “ridiculous” that position is, prosecutors made a striking comparison.
“Taken to its logical outcome, the defense would seem to opine that if the Unabomber’s manifesto had been set to music, it could not be used against him in any court,” the DA’s office wrote. “According to the defense’s argument, had the Turner Diaries been read with background music, it could not have been introduced against Timothy McVeigh.”
The “Unabomber” refers to terrorist Ted Kaczynski, who killed three and injured dozens by mailing bombs to victims between 1978 and 1995. McVeigh was the white supremacist behind the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994, which left 168 people dead, including 19 children.
In court documents, prosecutors also laid out exactly which Thug lyrics they plan to quote in court during the trial, including: “F– the snitches, need to be in ditches”; “Gave the lawyer close to 2 mil’ he handle all the killings;” and “I was a capo in my hood way before a plaque or a mention.” Prosecutors also listed many other lyrics, including by other YSL members, that they might reference to jurors.
Civil liberties activists and defense attorneys have long criticized the use of rap lyrics to win criminal convictions. They argue that it unfairly targets constitutionally protected speech, treating hyperbolic verse as literal confessions; they also say it can unfairly sway juries by tapping into racial biases.
Lawmakers in California passed legislation last year restricting the use of rap lyrics and other creative expression as evidence in criminal cases, and a federal bill in Congress that would impose similar restrictions has been widely supported by the music industry. But absent such statutes, courts around the country have mostly upheld the right of prosecutors to cite rap lyrics, particularly in gang-related cases.
Thug and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his “YSL” group was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.” Prosecutors claim the group committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
After months of delays, a jury was finally seated last week, clearing the way for the trial to kick off on Nov. 27 against Thug and five other remaining defendants. But before then, Judge Ural Glanville must decide on whether the jury can hear his lyrics as part of the prosecution’s case.
In a motion last year, Thug’s attorney, Brian Steel, argued that using the lyrics as evidence was “racist and discriminatory” and would leave the jury “poisoned” against his client. The use of that term was perhaps an allusion to a 2014 ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court, which overturned a shooting conviction on the grounds that “inflammatory rap verses” had risked “poisoning the jury against the defendant.”
“The admission and use of these lyrics/poetry/artistry against Mr. Williams in his upcoming trial would be a Constitutional violation and an abuse of discretion,” Steele wrote last year in his motion to exclude them from the case. “Mr. Williams has the absolute right, like all persons in America, to exercise lawful speech/expression.”
A hearing over the admissibility of lyrics is set for Wednesday morning (Nov. 8).
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Mariah Carey is hit with a copyright lawsuit over “All I Want for Christmas Is You”; a federal appeals court issues a first-of-its-kind ruling on copyright protections for dance routines; Taylor Swift gets named-dropped at the Supreme Court; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Mariah Sued Over Iconic Christmas Track (Again)
Just in time for the holidays, Mariah Carey is facing rebooted allegations that she ripped off her perennially-chart-topping “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from an earlier song of the same name.
Vince Vance (real name Andy Stone) first sued Carey last summer, claiming her 1994 holiday blockbuster infringed the copyrights to a 1989 song of the exact same name recorded by his Vince Vance and the Valiants. But the bare-bones complaint included few details about the alleged infringement, and the case was quickly dropped a few months later.
Now, Stone is back — both with new lawyers and with a more fleshed-out lawsuit.
Those new attorneys hail from Gerard Fox Law, the same firm that represented two songwriters in their lawsuit accusing Taylor Swift of stealing the lyrics to “Shake It Off” from 3LW’s “Playas Gon’ Play,” which also featured lyrics about “playas” and “haters.” After five years of litigation against the biggest pop star in the world, including a successful trip to the Ninth Circuit, Stone has certainly found himself battle-tested plaintiff lawyers to go after Carey.
And where the original complaint was short on specifics, the new one is chock full of them, including that she made up the story of how she wrote the song and that her own co-writer, Walter Afanasieff, has disputed that story.
“Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance’s new lawyers wrote in the re-filed complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun. This is simply a case of actionable infringement.”
Go read our entire story here, including the full complaint filed against Carey.
Other top stories this week…
CHOREOGRAPHY COPYRIGHTS – The Ninth Circuit issued a first-of-its-kind ruling on copyright protections for dance routines, reviving a case that accuses Fortnite creator Epic Games of stealing copyrighted moves from choreographer Kyle Hanagami, who’s worked with BTS, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears. The decision came after years of efforts by other dancers to secure better ownership of their routines, including Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion choreographer JaQuel Knight, as detailed by Rebecca Milzoff in her excellent 2020 Billboard cover story.
SCOTUS SWIFTIES? – Capping a year in which Taylor Swift’s name has dropped on Capitol Hill, at the Department of Justice and on NFL broadcasts, it came up last week during Supreme Court arguments in a major case over social media and the First Amendment, as part of legal hypothetical raised by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
YSL CASE SET FOR TRIAL – After months of delays, a jury was finally seated in the massive criminal case against Young Thug and other alleged members of an Atlanta street gang, clearing the way for a trial to begin later this month. But will it feature rap lyrics as evidence? Stay tuned this week…
STEVEN TYLER ACCUSED AGAIN – The Aerosmith frontman was hit with a second lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor decades ago, this time by a woman who says he forcibly kissed and groped her in New York City in 1975 when she was just 17.
AI FAIR USE ARGUMENT – Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic PBC told the U.S. Copyright Office this week that the massive scraping of copyrighted materials to train AI models ought to be considered “quintessentially lawful” – perhaps offering a preview of arguments the company will make in its upcoming legal battle with Universal Music Group (UMG) over those very same issues.
TICKET BOT CRACKDOWN – As reported by Billboard’s Dave Brooks, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) announced that she would roll out new legislation to beef up the BOTS ACT — a rarely-enforced 2016 law that outlawed the use of bots to attack ticket sales and jump the line to buy tickets ahead of consumers. If passed, the amendment will create a new forum for online ticket sellers to report successful bot attacks to the Federal Trade Commission, which is tasked with enforcing the statute.
CONTRACT RESTRICTIONS (TAYLOR’S VERSION) – Will trying to prevent the next ‘Taylor’s Version’ backfire on record labels? Following up on Steve Knopper’s reporting on new contractual restrictions pushed by labels in the wake of Taylor Swift‘s massively-successful re-recording campaign, music attorney Chris Castle argues that record companies might want to think twice.
It’s Sunday night, backstage ahead of the second Los Angeles show of Lauryn Hill and the Fugees’ anniversary tour. It will be a few hours yet before Hill opens the concert with a solo set of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 25 years after its release. The seats in the arena are slowly starting to fill.
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, a founding member of the Fugees, is sitting in his dressing room at the Kia Forum, watching the Buffalo Bills play the Cincinnati Bengals. Tonight is a celebration — of his landmark group, of all of the generations who have loved their music — and of his freedom, however much remains.
In April, the rapper accused in multimillion-dollar political conspiracies spanning two presidencies was convicted of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, after a trial in Washington, D.C., federal court that saw testimony from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Some of the lyrics, this art, is imitating my life right now,” he reflects on Fugees’ legacy and this tour, taking place 27 years after the release of the Grammy-award winning The Score, his rap trio’s second, final, and culture-shaping album. “Especially when I talk about feds and this and that.”
The “Ms. Lauryn Hill & Fugees: Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 25th Anniversary Tour” has dates scheduled through mid-December. Michel, who faces up to 20 years in prison on the top counts, doesn’t have a sentencing date yet. But, he says, he was never concerned about being able to do the tour.
“I trust the process,” Michel explains. He has a new attorney, Peter Zeidenberg, and is optimistic.
Last month, Michel argued in a motion for a new trial that, among other errors, his previous defense attorney used an “experimental” generative AI program to help write closing statements. In the closings, the attorney appeared to confuse key elements of the case and misattributed lyrics — “Every single day, every time I pray, I will be missing you” — to the Fugees instead of Diddy, according to the motion for a new trial.
“Obviously there’s been a little bit of progress, so we’ll see what happens,” Michel says.
Despite that run-in with artificial intelligence, though, he hasn’t soured on the concept: The world needs to recognize the technology is in “its infancy stage,” Michel says, and there’s a long way to go. “It’s the future.”
Outside his dressing room, the narrow hallways of the famed Inglewood venue are full of excited spectators made up of friends, family, fans — including an ecstatic Tiffany Haddish. Wyclef Jean’s room quickly becomes the center of the party, with Drake’s “Started from the Bottom” playing over a loudspeaker as he shows off his performing fit.
Far too often, reunions feel like cheap plays at nostalgia — not so much a celebration of the great work that came a couple decades prior, but an attempt at capitalizing on collective memory. There is no such sentiment here. When Jean, the third member of the Fugees, thinks about the way these performances affect him, it’s a homecoming — and the result of many years of hard work.
“If you ever created a band like in high school the first year of college, that’s what it feels like. So, like the Beatles, for example. It’s almost like you rehearse all your life through high school so you never have to rehearse again,” he says. “And tonight is monumental, because the arena we’re playing here, this is (where) the early Lakers (played). And so that’s how I always explain the Fugees. You know, I said, it’s like Showtime Lakers.”
The Fugees’ message is prescient, too — Michel points out a song like “Mask,” and its resonance with members of a younger generation who have gone through the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s almost like we prophesized a lot of things,” he says.
So how does a group know when they’ve got some magic? That a reunion tour is truly special? Jean compares it to a mountain — people don’t see the “combustions” that formed it over years — only “the end result, which is beautiful,” he says.
“And that’s sort of like how music is made,” Jean says. “So, when you make music that’s vulnerable, whether it is Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Fugees, Nas’ Illmatic, 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’, it’s going to always last forever.”
Close to 10 p.m., Hill emerges. She is awarded a plaque for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill receiving diamond RIAA status; quotes from bell hooks appear on the screen behind her. In the first of many surprises, Nas appears on stage to perform “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That).”
Hill is joined by Jean and Michel, and it is as if no time had passed. Then Cypress Hill’s B-Real comes out, as does Lil Wayne for “Ready or Not” and “A Milli.”
Afterward, fans pour out into the night. Nearby, rapper Travis Scott’s show is wrapping up at SoFi Stadium. The two audiences weave into one in the street; here are the past, present, and future of hip-hop, intertwined.
Offering a preview of arguments the company might make in its upcoming legal battle with Universal Music Group (UMG), artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic PBC told the U.S. Copyright Office this week that the massive scraping of copyrighted materials to train AI models is a “quintessentially lawful.”
Music companies, songwriters and artists have argued that such training represents an infringement of their works at a vast scale, but Anthropic told the federal agency Monday (Oct. 30) that it was clearly allowed under copyright’s fair use doctrine.
“The copying is merely an intermediate step, extracting unprotectable elements about the entire corpus of works, in order to create new outputs,” the company wrote. “This sort of transformative use has been recognized as lawful in the past and should continue to be considered lawful in this case.”
The filing came as part of an agency study aimed at answering thorny questions about how existing intellectual property laws should be applied to the disruptive new tech. Other AI giants, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google and Stability AI all lodged similar filings, explaining their views.
But Anthropic’s comments will be of particular interest in the music industry because that company was sued last month by UMG over the very issues in question in the Copyright Office filing. The case, the first filed over music, claims that Anthropic unlawfully copied “vast amounts” of copyrighted songs when it trained its Claude AI tool to spit out new lyrics.
In the filing at the Copyright Office, Anthropic argued that such training was a fair use because it copied material only for the purpose of “performing a statistical analysis of the data” and was not “re-using the copyrighted expression to communicate it to users.”
“To the extent copyrighted works are used in training data, it is for analysis (of statistical relationships between words and concepts) that is unrelated to any expressive purpose of the work,” the company argued.
UMG is sure to argue otherwise, but Anthropic said legal precedent was clearly on its side. Notably, the company cited a 2015 ruling by a federal appeals court that Google was allowed to scan and upload millions of copyrighted books to create its searchable Google Books database. That ruling and others established the principle that “large-scale copying” was a fair use when done to “create tools for searching across those works and to perform statistical analysis.”
“The training process for Claude fits neatly within these same paradigms and is fair use,” Anthropic’s lawyers wrote. “Claude is intended to help users produce new, distinct works and thus serves a different purpose from the pre-existing work.”
Anthropic acknowledged that the training of AI models could lead to “short-term economic disruption.” But the company said such problems were “unlikely to be a copyright issue.”
“It is still a matter that policymakers should take seriously (outside of the context of copyright) and balance appropriately against the long-term benefits of LLMs on the well-being of workers and the economy as a whole by providing an entirely new category of tools to enhance human creativity and productivity,” the company wrote.
Lawyers often say that bad facts make bad law – meaning that unusual or unlikely details of a case can shape precedent in unpredictable ways. But bad facts can also make for bad contracts, to judge by the contractual restrictions on re-recording that major labels may be adopting in the wake of the success of Taylor Swift‘s “Taylor’s Version” of her albums.
Re-recording restrictions, a common contractual provision that has been part of record deals for decades, are intended as a kind of post-term noncompete. Their understandable economic purpose is to stop an artist from re-recording songs released under a contract that has run its course in order to benefit a subsequent label – and let the subsequent recording compete with the original without a comparable investment. Under that logic, the reasonable duration of a re-recording restriction would be a few years, as was the practice before the “Taylor’s Version” releases came out. It’s harder to justify locking up artists for a protracted period that might be longer than the duration of the original recording agreement.
That duration could be limited, too, by a potential legal challenge. Both the federal government and many states restrict the enforceability of noncompete clauses in employment agreements, particularly when they limit economic freedom. (Examples include California Business and Professions Code Section 16600, and the recently passed New York Senate Bill S3100A, which New York governor Kathy Hochul is expected to sign.) Next year, the Federal Trade Commission will vote on banning noncompete clauses in employment agreements altogether. Labels often say that recording artists aren’t employees, but that wouldn’t necessarily put these kinds of restrictions above the fray – especially if they last longer than seems reasonable.
Few artists re-record anything, and those who do usually only revisit one or a few hits, maybe their biggest album at most, and that’s more likely if there’s a contractual dispute. It’s unprecedented for a significant artist to re-record his or her entire catalog, repackage each album and promote their rerelease – particularly when the original hit releases are still readily available. That requires motivation. Or, in Swift’s case, perhaps, frustration. But in a “Taylor’s Version” world, who wants to be the one who let it happen again?
Chris Castle
Laura Lee Nall Photography
Without getting into the he-said-she-said of the sale of Big Machine, including Swift’s recording catalog, it’s important to note that it was an unusual case. So, it’s worth asking if there’s a lower-risk alternative.
If a label is going to sell a living artist’s entire catalog – or sell a company whose value is dominated by that catalog – the safe thing to do might be to offer the artist a chance to bid on it. Or, failing that, at least consult with the artist to create a comfortable situation, even if that requires additional assurances or an additional payment. If you think it’s only necessary to do the minimum, look at what can happen with an overly legalistic approach. To artists like Swift, these recordings are their life.
Changing the recording agreement template to try to guarantee an outcome may backfire. “Taylor’s Version” simply isn’t a normal situation – it’s one that involved the world’s most popular artist, who is as attached to her catalog as any performer, plus just as business-savvy as most executives. It’s a situation that was almost impossible to anticipate – so making contracts even more one-sided may not help. Instead, a change like this could draw the attention of President Biden’s FTC, which seems to have an abiding interest in noncompete clauses. Especially if a number of competitors just happen to push the same contractual change at the same time.
If labels must have extended re-recording restrictions, couldn’t they add a sweetener, such as offering living artists a right to match the highest bid if their recording catalogs are ever sold individually, or a blocking right over the buyer or something similar? Alternatively, they could also just leave things be.
An overreaching re-recording restriction could also provoke retaliation from artists’ lawyers. They could make leverage points like post-term marketing restrictions and audits more important deal points in order to fight restrictions. That means disfavored buyers might have to wonder how hard it could be to get the approvals they need, or how much they would like continual audits. And in cases where artists are also principal songwriters, buyers could also have trouble clearing song rights, especially for new purposes like AI.
Some labels may be less concerned with expanding this restriction than they are with winning a competitive negotiation to sign a new artist. And if a competing label agrees to a shorter restriction, it could be an easy compromise that would cost little or nothing.
There’s always a temptation to add restrictions to contracts, but in this case, the exercise could backfire. Labels might be advised to be careful what they wish for.
Chris Castle is an Austin-based lawyer. He represents artists, publishers, songwriters and startups on commercial and public policy matters.
Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler is facing a second lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor decades ago, this time by a woman who says he forcibly kissed and groped her in New York City in 1975.
In a complaint filed Thursday (Nov. 2) in New York court, former teen model Jeanne Bellino says she has suffered “severe and permanent emotional distress” over the incidents, which allegedly occurred over a single day in the summer of 1975 when she was 17 and Tyler was 27.
“By 1975, Tyler had acquired wealth, stature, and power as a result of his career and status as a rock star,” Bellino’s lawyers write. “Tyler used his power, influence, and authority, as a well-known musician to sexually assault Plaintiff.”
In her lawsuit, Bellino claims that she and a friend had arranged to meet Aerosmith in Manhattan. While they were allegedly walking down Sixth Avenue with his entourage, she says Tyler pushed her into a phone booth.
“While holding her captive, Tyler stuck his tongue down her throat, and put his hands upon her body, her breasts, her buttocks, and her genitals, moving and removing clothing and pinning her against the wall of the phone booth,” her lawyers write. “As Tyler was mauling and groping Plaintiff, he was humping her pretending to have sex with Plaintiff.”
During the incident, Bellino says she could feel that “Tyler’s penis was erect and it was evident to her as he rubbed it against her that he was not wearing underwear and wearing thin pants.”
Because she was “relying upon her friend for transportation,” the woman’s lawyers say, a “dazed, confused, and shocked” Bellino continued with the group to the Warwick Hotel, where the band was allegedly staying.
“At the hotel, they entered through a bar entrance and there, Steven Tyler again pinned Plaintiff against the wall, put his tongue down her throat and started humping Plaintiff, simulating sex,” the lawsuit says.
Tyler then allegedly left and returned to his room, telling Bellino he would call her up later. Sitting in the lobby “sobbing and afraid,” she alleges that a call eventually came, but she says she instead fled the hotel with the help of a doorman and a sympathetic cab driver, who took her home to Queens. She claims she “immediately shared the horror she suffered with her sister, still crying uncontrollably.”
“As a result of the sexual assault, Plaintiff was hospitalized and medicated,” her lawyers write. “Plaintiff has continued to require medication to cope with the sexual assault and has suffered long term physical injury associated with the trauma.”
A rep for Tyler did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
The new case comes just under a year after Tyler was sued by Julia Holcomb, who claims that the rocker repeatedly assaulted her for three years starting in 1973, when she was just 16 years old. Holcomb claims to be the girl Tyler referred to in his memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, when he wrote he “almost took a teen bride” and convinced her parents to grant him guardianship over her.
“She was 16, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in the book passage that’s quoted in the lawsuit.
Tyler has denied the accusations and moved to dismiss the case in April. However, his arguments raised eyebrows at the time, as one of his defenses was that he was immunized against the allegations because he had been granted legal custody over Holcomb.
Like Holcomb’s case, Bellino’s new lawsuit cites a so-called look-back law that allows alleged victims to bring cases that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. Bellino cites the Gender Motivated Violence Act, which was amended last year to add a two-year lookback window that began on March 1.
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.
A jury was finally seated Wednesday in the sweeping RICO case in Atlanta against Young Thug and other alleged members of a street gang called YSL, clearing the way for a trial to begin in late November after months of delays.
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At the end of a hearing in Fulton County Superior Court, Judge Ural Glanville swore in a jury to hear the case, in which prosecutors allege that Young Thug (Jeffery Williams) and his YSL were not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.”
The process of picking a jury began way back in January, but the effort was repeatedly delayed as the court struggled to find jurors who could commit to the massive case. With a trial expected to last many months, many prospective jurors successfully argued that they could not afford to halt their lives, citing the need to earn money, childcare commitments and health problems.
The original indictment, filed in May 2022 by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, named Thug and 27 other alleged gang members as defendants, but the upcoming trial will feature just seven. Many defendants have pleaded out of the case, including fellow star rapper Gunna (Sergio Kitchens), who accepted a plea deal last December. Others have been split from the proceedings into separate cases.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Glanville said the opening statements in the trial would kick off on Nov. 27. The jury is composed of seven Black women, two white women, two Black men and one white man, according to reports by Atlanta media outlets including the local NBC affiliate.
The YSL case is built around Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law based on the more famous federal RICO statute that’s been used to target the mafia, drug cartels and other forms of organized crime. Such laws make it easier for prosecutors to sweep up many members of an alleged criminal conspiracy based on many smaller acts that aren’t directly related. Notably, it’s the same statute that Willis is using to prosecute former President Donald Trump and several associates over allegations that tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Thug and the other defendants are accused of violating the Georgia RICO law through numerous individual “predicate acts,” including murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade, as well as other separate charges. Thug also faces several other charges over guns, drugs and other materials allegedly found in his home when he was arrested.
If fully convicted, he could face a life sentence. He’s already been in jail for 17 months since the indictment was handed down, after the judge repeatedly refused to grant him pre-trial release on bond.
Beyond indicting two of rap’s biggest stars, the YSL case also made waves because it cited their lyrics as supposed evidence of their crimes — a controversial practice that critics say unfairly sways juries and injects racial bias into the courtroom. California recently restricted the tactic in that state, but Willis has strongly defended using it against Young Thug.
The extent to which prosecutors can present lyrics as evidence at the upcoming trial is not yet settled. A hearing next week is scheduled to hear arguments from both sides before a ruling is issued ahead of the Nov. 27 start date.
Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, the former street gang leader charged with masterminding the 1996 drive-by killing of Tupac Shakur, is slated to appear in court on Thursday (Nov. 2) for his arraignment in the case. According to the Associated Press, however, it’s unclear if Davis will have a lawyer representing him during the appearance after losing his bid to be represented in court by the lawyer who spoke out in public about his defense two weeks ago.
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Attorney Ross Goodman said on Oct. 19 that he saw “obvious defenses” in the murder case, pointing out that police and prosecutors do not have a murder weapon or the car used in the shooting, as well as “no witnesses from 27 years ago.” Prosecutors have said that Davis is the last person alive who was in the car that night.
Goodman told the AP on Wednesday (Nov. 1) that Davis, 60, could not meet terms of an agreement that the judge in the case gave two weeks to hash out on Oct. 19; Goodman did not specify what was holding up such an agreement. When Davis appears in court today, Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones could order a financial accounting of Davis’ assets to determine if he can afford a lawyer of if she needs to declare him indigent and name a public defender to handle the case.
A deputy in the Clark County public defender’s office told the AP that they are reviewing the case to determine if they can represent Davis or if they have a conflict of interest such as representing other people involved in the case in the past. The judge may also name a private practice defense attorney to represent Davis at taxpayers’ expense, or assign a public defender from the county.
“We’re just not sure at this point how this will play out and who will end up representing him,” said Jordan Savage, assistant special public defender. Davis’ longtime Los Angeles personal lawyer, Edi Faal, said he expected a public defender would be named to defend Davis; Faal previously said he was helping Davis find a defense attorney in Nevada and confirmed Goodman’s involvement two weeks ago. Davis is expected to plead not guilty to the murder charge, which could land him in prison for the rest of his life.
Davis was arrested outside his suburban Las Vegas home on Sept. 29 on the same day an indictment was filed against him accusing the self-proclaimed street gang leader of orchestrating the shooting that killed Shakur, 25, and wounded his label boss, imprisoned music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Davis’ nephew, gang member Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, 23, was involved in a brawl with Shakur in a Las Vegas casino on the night of the shooting and denied being involved in the shooting; he was killed in a May 1998 shooting in Compton and the other two men in the car with Davis and Anderson are also dead. Davis, meanwhile, has discussed his alleged role Shakur’s death in interviews as well as in a 2019 tell-all memoir describing his time as a Crips gang leader in Compton, including claiming that he provided the gun, was in the car and was the “on-ground, on-site commander of the effort” to kill Skakur and Knight that night.