After the execution of James G. Broadnax in Texas, questions persist over use of rap lyrics as evidence

After languishing on death row in Texas for nearly two decades, James G. Broadnax was executed on April 30, 2026.

In 2009, a nearly all-white jury convicted him of robbery and double murder. Broadnax’s lawyers believed the initial rejection of all Black candidates from the jury pool was unconstitutional. They also believed it was unconstitutional that prosecutors used 40 pages of Broadnax’s handwritten lyrics, which they characterized as “gangsta rap” that doubled as a “self-admission” of Broadnax’s criminal “mentality.”

The lyrics shown to the jury were not introduced during the phase of the trial that determined Broadnax’s guilt for robbery and murder. They were presented only during the sentencing phase, when the jury considered whether he should receive the death penalty.

In 2025, I published “Being Dope: Hip Hop and Theory through Mixtape Memoir.” The book uses prose and lyrics to explore common misconceptions about rap and rappers. Along with the way lyrics continue to be used to demonize people inside and outside the courtroom – in ways that no other art form has to contend with – I highlight how “rap” is often used as shorthand for violence, drugs and criminality.

When rap lyrics become death sentences

In 2019, Erik Nielson, a scholar whose work focuses on the use of rap music as evidence in criminal trials, co-wrote “Rap on Trial” with legal scholar Andrea Dennis. In the book, Nielson and Dennis highlight a pattern of prosecutors treating rap lyrics as confessions or evidence of motive, even though they’re typically fictional or exaggerated. Meanwhile, even though other art forms routinely involve characters, lyrics or imagery that depicts violence, they’re rarely used as evidence of guilt in the courtroom.

Dennis and Nielson, who’s a signatory on one of the amicus briefs that was filed in support of Broadnax, maintain a database of over 800 cases in which lyrics have been used as evidence.

It includes some well-known cases, but most of the entries in the database involve people who are not well known as rappers.

For instance, during the closing arguments in the trial of Dominique Green, Texas prosecutors read aloud graphic lyrics from a Geto Boys song. Green hadn’t written the lyrics, and there was no clear connection between him and the song. Critics like Nielsen say the move was intended to shape how the jury perceived Green, who was sentenced to death in 1994 and executed in 2004.

Broadnax met a similar fate. While high on PCP and marijuana, he’d initially confessed to the killings of Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in the Dallas suburbs in 2008. He later retracted his confession. In March 2026, Broadnax’s cousin and co-defendant, Demarius Cummings, signed a sworn statement admitting to pulling the trigger to kill Swan and Butler. Cummings had been tried separately and had already received life without parole.

Cummings said that he initially went along with Broadnax’s confession, but after 17 years – and learning in February 2026 that his cousin would be executed – he felt compelled to correct his previous statements.

Evidence corroborates Cummings’ admission. His DNA was found on the grip of the murder weapon and on the clothing of one of the victims. Broadnax’s DNA was not found on either.

Despite a flurry of last-minute appeals and amicus briefs, the state executed Broadnax.

From ‘Jim Crow’ to ‘authentically’ Black

In my view, the willingness of courts to accept rap lyrics as evidence emerges from popular entertainment’s long-standing deployment of negative stereotypes about Black people.

In the U.S., minstrel shows were among the first widely popular forms of mass entertainment. Performers were often white people who donned blackface to mock Black people through song, dance and slapstick comedy. Characters like Thomas Rice’s “Jim Crow” employed tropes of Black people as buffoonish, lazy and lascivious – stereotypes that underpinned the racist legal code of segregation that came to be known as Jim Crow laws.

Alongside legal segregation, separate and unequal categories emerged for Black music. In 1920, Mamie Smith released “Crazy Blues,” the first commercial blues recording by a Black artist. Recordings like Smith’s were cordoned off into their own separate category, called “race records.” In 1942, Billboard began charting another invented category that it dubbed the “Harlem Hit Parade.” Black music would go on to be called, at various points, “rhythm and blues,” “soul” and “urban contemporary” into the 1970s.

These genres helped market this music as “authentically” Black. I use quotes because I argue that these genres have always reflected the audience’s listening practices and expectations, as much as anything real or unique about Black people.

A boogeyman for America’s ills

By the 1980s and 1990s, rap music was likewise pigeonholed as a “Black” genre. And “gangsta rap” soon emerged as a subgenre that became, for some listeners, an effective stand-in for all the purported ills that plagued Black communities.

N.W.A. rapped about police brutality, violence and poverty, among other topics. Tracks like “F— Tha Police” were lyrically provocative and confrontational.

When Milt Ahlerich, an assistant director at the FBI, sent a letter to N.W.A.’s record label warning that the track could lead to disrespect and violence against law enforcement, the troupe saw a marketing opportunity, going on to brag that they were “the world’s most dangerous group.” And many audiences went on to interpret their tracks as documentary evidence of everyday Black life. In fact, I argue that this broader interpretation of rap music led, at least in part, to the eagerness with which the public initially supported the so-called “war on drugs,” which ended up disproportionately targeting Black communities in places like Decatur, Illinois, where I grew up.

Even when artists go to great pains to distinguish their art, many audiences simply want to believe all rap music and rap artists were doing and saying the same things. Their unwillingness to engage beyond the surface means a refusal to examine rap’s layered explorations of life, pride and pain, described through lyrical humor, social commentary and witty wordplay.

As Rolling Stone journalist Ed Kiersh wrote in 1986, “To much of white America, rap means mayhem and bloodletting.”

‘Being Dope’ is personal

For me, this is personal. I have been a rapper all of my professional life. In “Being Dope,” I write about teaching high school in Springfield, Illinois, where a local radio host used my music to try to paint me as unprofessional or worse, and called for me to be fired over it.

I decided to pursue a Ph.D. and study the rhetorical appeal of rap music. I wrote a rap album as my dissertation, and after becoming a professor of hip-hop, I published the first-ever peer-reviewed album with an academic press.

Rap has many functions. It’s a daily practice undertaken by ordinary people, not just the ones who aim to be famous. When I discuss the public perception of rappers, I highlight how I continue to grapple with the uneasiness my identity as a rapper can elicit in other people. I also focus on the stories of friends and family members, as well as people like Willie McCoy, Eric Reason and Jordan Davis – Black Americans whose deaths were blamed on rap music, a form of scapegoating I call “rapwashing.”

So when I see “rap” or “rapper” in a headline to imply guilt or provoke negative associations, I’m reminded of the truth in Kiersh’s statement. It’s even more troubling when rap lyrics are used to help deliver a death sentence.

Gangsta rap’s effectiveness as a prosecutorial tool, like the minstrel shows before it, depends on audiences mistaking caricature for authenticity, and hinges on hearing artistic expression as documentary evidence of criminal actions. Using gangsta rap to justify state-sanctioned executions only extends the dark legacy of Jim Crow into the present.

A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.