Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Prison for Posting a Rap Song Called "Kill Me a Cop":
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_02-2009_08_08.shtml#1249343839
The [1]Lakeland (Florida) Ledger reports:
[Antavio Johnson, 20, was charged with two counts of corruption by
threat of a public servant after a Polk County gang detective found
the song on a MySpace page belonging to Hood Certified
Entertainment in February.
In his song, "Kill Me a Cop," Johnson mentions two Lakeland police
officers by name, according to the Sheriff's Office....
Johnson pleaded no contest to the charges July 24 and was sentenced
to two years in state prison....
In the song, the lyrics "Im'ma kill me a cop one day" and "Call me
crazy but I think I fell in love with the sound of hearing the
dispatcher saying, 'Officer Down,'" are repeated....
Johnson also refers to being on probation, Sheriff Grady Judd and
the 2006 killing of deputy Matt Williams and his K-9 DioGi....
A friend of Johnson's said he posted the song without paying close
attention to the lyrics, and the song was never meant to be released,
but it's not clear to me whether the prosecutors believed that.
It's hard to tell whether the song is constitutionally protected
without seeing the full lyrics, which I couldn't find. (Please let me
know if you have an authoritative copy.) My tentative sense, though,
is this:
(1) If Johnson distributed the song (or authorized such distribution)
with the purpose of threatening the two particular police officers,
then it would probably fit within the "true threats" exception to the
First Amendment protection.
(2) If the song had simply generically said that the singer would kill
cops one day, it would probably be constitutionally protected.
(3) If Johnson expressly mentioned the two police officers, but did
not have the purpose of threatening those officers -- but was just
saying it as fiction, much as a writer might have a character say
things that the writer doesn't intend to have taken seriously -- then
the speech is probably protected (see [2]Virginia v. Black, Part
III.A), though some post-Virginia-v.-Black circuit court decisions say
that such a purpose to threaten is not required.
References
1.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20090730/NEWS/907305103/1410?Title=Lakeland-Man-Goes-To-Prison-For-a-Song
2. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/01-1107.ZO.html
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