0:15

Pushkin. Hey,

0:18

it's just Richmond from Broken Record dropping in one

0:20

more time during our winter break. Was something special

0:22

for you? It's an episode from the new season

0:24

of the podcast Slowburn, a great show

0:26

from Slate. Slowburn looks at the biggest and most

0:29

consequential stories from recent history,

0:31

and this season they're looking at a pivotal moment

0:33

in rap history, the murders of Tupac

0:35

and Biggie. How did their friendship turn into a

0:38

bicoastal beef that threatened to consume the

0:40

world of hip hop? And how was

0:42

it that two of the biggest rap stars were killed within

0:44

months of each other? And why were their murders never

0:46

solved. An episode You're about to Hear, host

0:48

Joel Anderson traces the history of the hostilities

0:51

between rap music and law enforcement

0:53

and takes us back to the time when juries debated

0:55

whether their hip hop lyrics could incite black

0:57

people to shoot police officers. Check

0:59

it out and subscribe to Slowburn wherever you get your

1:01

podcasts. I'll be back with you guys soon with more

1:03

Broken Record episodes in the meantime, and joy

1:06

Slowburn. This podcast

1:08

has language some people might find defensive.

1:12

Ronald Ray Howard grew up in South Park, a

1:15

tough neighborhood in Houston. He described

1:17

it as a war zone like Tupac

1:19

Shakur. He moved around a lot as a child.

1:22

Howard attended nine different elementary

1:24

schools and was held back three times.

1:27

When he was sixteen, he dropped out of high

1:29

school. Howard

1:31

ended up selling drugs in the town of Port

1:33

Lavaca, two hours down the Gulf Coast

1:36

from Houston. That's where he was

1:38

headed the night of April eleventh, nineteen

1:40

ninety two, when a Texas Highway patrolman

1:42

pulled him over. Howard

1:45

wasn't a fan of law enforcement. This

1:47

is Alan Tanner, a criminal defense lawyer.

1:50

You know. Here was a young kid from Houston who

1:53

had had problems with police in this neighborhood

1:56

where a lot of the kids were brought up there

1:58

to Hay cops. To begin with, Howard

2:01

had another reason to be weary. He

2:03

was a drug dealer driving a stolen car.

2:07

The patrolman who pulled Howard over was Bill

2:09

Davidson. He'd been on the force for about

2:11

twenty years. He and his wife,

2:13

Linda, had raised two children in the town of Edna,

2:16

population fifty five hundred, where

2:18

He was a city council member and the president

2:20

of the Little League. As

2:26

Davidson approached Ronald Ray Howard's car, Howard

2:29

shot him in the neck with a nine millimeter

2:31

pistol. Davidson

2:33

died three days later. Howard

2:37

was arrested not long after he fled the scene.

2:40

He confessed to the crime soon after. In

2:43

most cases, the murder of a highway

2:45

patrolman would have remained a local tragedy,

2:48

but the killing of Bill Davidson became a national

2:50

story, one that would change the shape

2:53

of the music industry. That's

2:55

because of the cassette tape that was playing in Ronald Ray

2:58

Howard's car, a dubbed copy

3:00

of two Apocalypse. Now, how

3:03

did gangster rap push America to confront

3:05

police brutality? How was

3:07

fear of gangster rappers used to prevent

3:09

a reckoning with police violence? And

3:12

would a jury believe that rap music could turn black

3:14

listeners into cop killers? This

3:25

is slow burn. I'm Joel Anderson.

3:28

The cops in America actually killed kids.

3:30

The rap music promotes violence

3:33

against authority and consequently

3:35

violence against law enforcement. The weight is

3:37

LAPD was operating. They needed

3:39

to get killed. I'm about to bust

3:41

some shots off. I'm about to dust some

3:44

cops off episode

3:47

two Cops on My Tail. In

3:58

the summer of nineteen eighty nine, a spokesman

4:00

for the FBI sent a one page letter to

4:02

the Los Angeles Office of Priority Records.

4:05

The New York Times said the letter was historic until

4:08

then, and the bureau had never taken an

4:10

official position on a work of art. The

4:13

work of art in question was the song Fuck the Police

4:16

by the rap group NWA, short

4:18

for Niggas with Attitudes. Milt

4:21

all Rich, assistant director of the FBI's

4:24

Office of Public Affairs, accused

4:26

NWA and Priority Records of encouraging

4:28

violence and disrespectful law enforcement.

4:31

He noted that seventy eight officers had been killed

4:33

in the line of duty in nineteen eighty eight, and

4:36

he said, I believe my views reflect

4:38

the opinion of the entire law enforcement community.

4:41

No doubt Fuck the Police was provocative

4:44

in their lyrics. The members of NWA

4:46

fantasized about retaliation. White any

4:51

motherfucking foo uniform just

4:54

coming from the CPT police

4:57

are fright on me, you nigga

4:59

on the wall path And when I finished, it's

5:02

gonna be a blood back. Dine

5:05

into La Yo drag Us

5:07

something to Say. NWA

5:09

was a loose fraternity of rappers in DJ's from

5:11

southern California. The group's leader

5:14

was Easy and its stars were Doctor Dre

5:16

and Ice Cube. Together they

5:18

created raw and profane music from the things they

5:20

saw in their neighborhood gangs, guns,

5:23

and drugs. Fuck

5:25

the Police was a response to decades of racist

5:27

abuse, particularly the gang sweeps that had

5:30

become common in southern California.

5:33

Police said they were trying to stop the drug trade

5:35

and gang violence, but many residents,

5:37

especially the black and brown ones, called it racial profiling.

5:41

When NWA's debut album, Straight Out of

5:43

Compton came out in August nineteen eighty eight, it

5:45

didn't get much radio play. MTV

5:47

wouldn't air their video, Rolling Stone

5:49

didn't publish a review. Most

5:52

of the group's early buzz came from local shows,

5:54

autograph sessions, and small black owned

5:56

record stores, but not long

5:58

after the album caught on with black hip hop fans,

6:01

it crossed over to white audiences. A

6:03

priority record salesman called Straight Out of Compton

6:06

elicited forbidden Fruit for junior

6:08

high. Obviously, somebody

6:10

is listening. In just six weeks,

6:13

straight out of Compton has gone gold, selling

6:15

more than a half a million copies. Rebellious

6:18

teenagers and hip hop heads weren't the only people paying

6:20

attention. Local police departments

6:22

facts the lyrics of Fuck the Police from city

6:24

to city. Many officers refused

6:27

to work security to NWA concerts, which

6:29

made it difficult for promoters to book the group.

6:32

At a concert in Detroit in nineteen eighty nine,

6:34

the members of NWA were chased off stage

6:36

by police after performing a few lines of

6:38

the song. The controversy got

6:40

NWA a lot of news coverage. Many

6:43

in law enforce mcphear that nwas

6:45

wrapped entices youngsters into crime

6:48

by glamorizing street gangs and

6:50

making bullies out to be the bad guys. Who

6:52

was just letting everybody noted black people

6:55

was fed up with getting harassed by the police and getting

6:57

b bomped. All that attention,

6:59

positive and negative, helped make NWA

7:01

a national sensation. Doctor Dre

7:04

thanked all Rich for writing the FBI letter. You

7:06

made us a lot of money, he said. Over

7:10

the next three years, few other rap

7:12

artists succeeded in drawing attention to police brutality

7:14

in such an intense way. Then

7:17

in March nineteen ninety one, police

7:19

abuse reached millions of American living rooms.

7:22

The three police officers facing felony

7:25

criminal charges who were among a group of

7:27

fifteen who stopped a twenty five year

7:29

old black man last Saturday night, then

7:31

beat him, kicked him, and clubbed him, unaware

7:34

that an amateur photographer was recording

7:36

the incident on videotape. Los

7:38

Angeles Police chief. The beating of Rodney King

7:40

was recorded by an LA resident who sent the tape

7:42

to a local TV station. It

7:45

was one of the first widely seen videos

7:47

of police brutality and with

7:49

whatever it is we called viral in the

7:51

nineteen nineties. Prior to his release

7:53

from jail last night, twenty five year old Rodney

7:55

King showed his injury to reporters,

7:58

the bruises, broken legs, and the

8:00

scars from the stun gun which folded

8:02

him with fifty thousand bolt shocks. I

8:04

could say, after the first three

8:07

good licks with one you know, one with

8:09

that with the shocker,

8:12

and the next with

8:15

the billy cloud across the face, I was

8:17

scared. I was scared.

8:19

For decades, members of minority communities

8:22

had argued that police brutality was

8:24

underreported. The Rodney

8:26

King video was evidence that they were right. After

8:30

the tape came out, rappers joined

8:32

civil rights activists and leading a national

8:34

conversation about police brutality. Their

8:37

music also took on a new urgency.

8:40

While America reckoned with the Rodney King video,

8:43

Tupac was putting together his solo debut,

8:45

Tupocalypse Now. Tupac

8:47

rapped about police harassment and brutality

8:49

throughout the album, and in nineteen

8:52

ninety one interview with davyd, a Bay Area

8:54

hip hop journalist, he explained this relentless

8:57

focus on police violence. In some situations,

8:59

I showed us having the power and the other

9:01

situations, I show it as it's more to

9:05

happen with the police

9:07

or with the power structure having the ultimate

9:09

power. But I showed both ways. I

9:12

showed ways how it really happens, in ways that I wish

9:14

it could be. The first

9:16

single from Tupocalypse Now was called Trapped,

9:19

and the lyrics Tupac fantasized

9:21

about getting revenge on the officers who harassed

9:23

him. They got me trapped comparely

9:26

both the city streets by a coprapting

9:28

to me, then asking my advinency, hands

9:30

up, throw me up against the wall. Bitn't do

9:33

a thing at all, telling you one day Second

9:35

Shot couped up a few

9:37

weeks after the song was released. The story

9:39

from Trapped became very real for Tupac.

9:43

On October seventeenth, nineteen ninety

9:45

one, Tupac was crossing a street

9:47

in downtown Oakland when two policemen stopped

9:49

him. They accused him of jaywalking

9:52

and asked to see his ID, and

9:54

the police report officers refer

9:56

to Tupac by's middle name Amaru and

9:58

call him angry and hostile, they

10:01

said. Tupac told them, this is just two

10:03

white cops who want to stop a nigger. Good

10:05

morning, I am here today

10:08

with my client Tupac. I'm more

10:10

shark here as well. And a press conference

10:12

about a month later, Tupac told his side

10:14

of the story. Next thing I know, my face was

10:17

being buried into the concrete and I

10:19

was laying face down in the gut up waking

10:21

up from being unconscious and cuffs

10:24

with blood on my face and I'm going

10:27

to jail for resistant arrests. That's harassment

10:29

to me that I had to be stopped in the middle of the

10:31

street and checked like we in South Africa. And

10:33

asked for my ID officer boy. Tupac

10:36

suit the Oakland Police Department for ten million

10:38

dollars alleging false arrested imprisonment.

10:42

The case eventually settled for a reported forty

10:44

two thousand. On

10:46

the same day, Tupac folders complaining against

10:49

Oakland Police. November twelfth, nineteen

10:51

ninety one, Tupocalypse Now appeared

10:53

in record stores. It was the first

10:56

major rap release for Interscope Records, which

10:58

was partly owned by Warner Music Group. Tupocalypse

11:02

Now was no bestseller. It peaked

11:04

at number sixty four on the Billboard Hot two hundred,

11:07

But what it lacked in commercial success

11:09

it made up foreign social resonance. Tupac

11:12

rapped about the plagues of poverty and violence,

11:15

and his righteous anger at the police carried echoes

11:17

of his black panther lineage. Tupac

11:20

told Billboard Magazine the album was like

11:22

a battle cry. The

11:25

police didn't pay much attention to Tuopocalypse

11:27

Now. The record that set off the

11:29

next battle between hip hop and the cops wasn't

11:31

rap at all. It was a heavy metal

11:33

album put out by Ice Tea. I

11:37

was one of the first gangster rappers. His

11:39

landmark song six in the Morning, named

11:42

for the LAPD's early am battering

11:44

ram raids helped to define the genre

11:46

in the mid nineteen eighties. But

11:49

I See was also a fan of thrash metal,

11:51

and in nineteen ninety he formed a metal band

11:53

with his high school friend Ernie c I

11:56

sang and wrote the lyrics, which covered the same

11:58

street level subjects he rapped about. They

12:01

called the band body count Their

12:04

first album, released in March nineteen ninety

12:06

two, featured the songs Akk

12:09

Bitch, Evil Dick, and

12:12

Mama's Got a Doe Tonite. But

12:14

the one that caused all the fuss was the

12:16

last song on the album,

12:38

cop Killer, mentioned Rodney King by name and

12:41

also named checked. LAPD chief Darryl

12:43

Gates Icy called it

12:45

a protest song. Body

12:48

Counts album, released by Warner Brothers

12:50

Records, didn't top the charts. Here's

12:52

Dan Charnis, who wrote about rap for The

12:54

Source and signed hip hop acts for record labels.

12:57

What happens is this album comes out

13:00

and it's really not that successful commercially.

13:03

It's a media event, you know, in terms of

13:05

oh, iced T's doing a heavy metal thing, and that's cool,

13:07

but it's not really getting air. Late then

13:13

the verdict came in a

13:16

month after the release of body count. The

13:18

LAPD officers who beat Rodney King were

13:21

acquitted of almost all charges. The

13:25

jury's decision ignited one of the biggest race

13:27

riots in American history. Since

13:30

darkness fell last night, the city of Angels

13:32

has been a perfect vision of hell. The

13:37

number swell. They suddenly

13:40

about half America just got more mal attentt

13:42

and started things nearby.

13:45

Dozens of thieves strip an auto park

13:47

store. Some sick Christmas

13:49

has exposed the worst in all of them.

13:54

And Los Angeles is ignited by the fires

13:56

of riots, sparking a war of words

13:58

over justice in America, as I feel

14:01

that the jury in Semi

14:03

Valley gave the okay to continue

14:06

to abuse and oppressed and suppress

14:08

black people in this country.

14:17

In the midst of the riots, news media

14:20

turned to Iced Tea to explain what was happening in

14:22

Los Angeles. Well, young rap musicians

14:24

have some ideas of their own about what caused

14:27

the dead knee violence. We definitely knew there

14:29

was a lot of tension down here, and we tried to explain

14:31

it to people, but nobody wanted to listen. We would

14:33

like the voices from Danny in the hood yelling

14:35

out to people on a rap record. During

14:38

one interview, a TV news anchor in

14:40

La asked iced Tea to do something to stop

14:42

the riots, but he refused to

14:44

play that role. I can't honestly

14:47

say that if I didn't have this money in my pocket and

14:49

I wasn't who I was, that I wouldn't

14:51

be there too, iced Tea said. When

14:55

the fires died down, sixty

14:57

three people were dead and nearly twenty

14:59

four hundred were injured. Police

15:01

had made twelve thousand arrest. Estimates

15:04

of the damage drain as high as a billion dollars,

15:07

and thanks to cop Killer, I see

15:10

was one of the public faces of the violence and destruction,

15:16

and the weeks after the riots, a Dallas

15:18

police officer came across the Body Count album.

15:21

One of his teenage daughter's friends had brought it over.

15:25

The officer got the lyrics from cop Killer printed

15:27

in his police unions newsletter, next to

15:29

a call for a boycott of Time Warner products.

15:32

If we want this pulled from the record stores,

15:35

it read, We're going to have to make it

15:37

happen ourselves

15:39

soon. The campaign expanded to police

15:41

unions nationwide here's

15:44

Dan Charnis. This jeopardizes

15:47

all of Time Warner's upcoming business

15:49

in getting cable franchises all over the country.

15:52

And then nationwide police unions begin

15:54

to join with Texas because

15:57

all of them are sort of like on the defense after

16:00

the La riots and the Rodney King

16:02

thing, So they're basically

16:05

trying to paint themselves as the victims. See.

16:07

You know, people don't have backed for police,

16:10

but it's the same thing as saying

16:13

blue lives matter today. The

16:15

protests from law enforcement got the attention of elected

16:18

officials, including those on Time Warner's

16:20

home turf. The La City

16:22

Council and County Board adopted motions condemning

16:25

Iced Tea and the label. California

16:27

Attorney General Dan Lungren sent letters to

16:29

record stores urging them to stop selling

16:31

the record. The National Rifle

16:33

Association promised to give legal assistance

16:35

to the family of any police officers shot

16:38

or killed if it could be shown that

16:40

the violence was incited by cop Killer. Sixty

16:43

members of Congress signed a letter to Time Warner

16:45

calling cop Killer vile and

16:47

despicable, and then Vice

16:50

President Dan Quell got involved. Take

16:52

for example, the work

16:54

of the rapper Iced Tea

17:00

Quell was speaking at a convention of police officers

17:02

who were involved in an anti drug program.

17:05

I am sure you're

17:07

all familiar by now with

17:11

Iced Tea's record, distributed by

17:13

Time Warner, which says

17:15

that it's okay to kill cops. Time

17:19

Warner's defense is that

17:21

this is free speech and

17:24

it is constitutional. Well,

17:27

of course, we all believe in free

17:29

speech, and it may be constitutional,

17:32

but that doesn't make it right. It

17:34

is wrong for Time Warner Corporation

17:37

to do what it's doing. These

17:42

were calls for censorship of a single record

17:45

from local, state, and federal

17:47

officials their implication that

17:50

rap music might cause listeners to murder

17:52

police officers. Iced

17:55

Tea and his defenders tried to keep the focus on the

17:57

reality of police abuse rather

17:59

than hypothetical violence against cops. Here

18:02

he is being interviewed on Australian TV

18:05

in nineteen ninety two. American

18:07

people are really in arms about

18:09

this song, which doesn't kill It's just a

18:12

song, but the cops are in America

18:15

actually kill kids. This is a very

18:17

angry song, song about rage. Okay,

18:19

but I understand that you said

18:22

this in one of your US interviews.

18:24

I've got no trouble with killing brutal

18:27

cops. True, they

18:29

have no trouble with killing what they consider brutal

18:32

kids. See. My attitude

18:34

is that just by because you have a badge

18:37

doesn't give you the right to murder me. For

18:40

a while time, Warner defended

18:42

the rapper and the song, and

18:44

in June nineteen ninety two op ed in The Wall

18:46

Street Journal. CEO Gerald Levine

18:49

called cop Killer a shout of pain

18:51

and protest, and asked why critics

18:53

couldn't hear what rappers trying to tell us.

18:57

Everything changed after the company's

18:59

annual shareholders meeting. That

19:01

meeting was held in July at a hotel

19:04

in Beverly Hills. Outside,

19:06

shareholders were met by nearly one hundred

19:09

police officers with picket signs. I

19:11

see cruised by in a Rose Royce and

19:14

gave the protesting cops of the finger. Inside

19:17

the hotel, boycott supporters

19:20

brought into the big guns. The

19:22

actor Charlton Heston, who had become a right

19:24

wing activist and prominent member of the nr

19:26

A, was there to speak. Here's

19:29

Heston recounting his performance years later.

19:32

I asked for the floor and do

19:34

a hushed room with a thousand average

19:36

American stockholders. I simply

19:39

read the full lyrics of cop

19:41

Killer, every vicious,

19:43

vulgar, dirty word there were selling.

19:47

I got my twelve gage sawed

19:49

off, I got my head lights turned off.

19:52

I'm about to bust some shots

19:54

off. I'm about to dust some cops off.

19:57

Following heston Time, Warner board

20:00

members heard from two officers who'd been

20:02

shot in the face and disfigured.

20:05

After the meeting, the Burbank headquarters

20:07

of Warner Brothers Records was undersea.

20:09

Each executives

20:11

were bombarded with hate mail and received threatening

20:13

phone calls. Bomb threats

20:15

forced police to clear the building. Eventually,

20:19

Iced T caved. In his memoir,

20:22

he wrote the Time Warner never pressured him to

20:24

make a decision. He said

20:26

he felt awful for the corporation, and

20:28

he realized the controversy wasn't going away.

20:32

I'd been dissing rappers for years. They

20:34

didn't do shit, he wrote. Then

20:36

I'd dissed the cops and they came

20:38

after me like no gang I've ever encountered.

20:42

Iced decided to rerelease the album without

20:44

cop Killer, and police groups called

20:46

off the boycott. In

20:48

January of nineteen ninety three, Warner

20:50

Brothers let iced out of his contract he

20:53

signed with Priority Records, which had distributed

20:55

nwas straight out of Compton. The

20:58

upshot for music artists

21:00

and hip hop of Cop Killer is

21:03

that Warner Brothers is going to

21:05

start to tamp down all

21:07

kinds of things that can cause problems in

21:09

the future. We're going to have to look at

21:11

every lyric that you guys are doing,

21:14

and if you don't like it, then we'll

21:17

let you go. You don't have to be with

21:19

us, but we have too many irons

21:22

and too many fires, corporately

21:24

speaking, to risk everything

21:27

because somebody's gonna get upset

21:29

at your lyrics. Throughout

21:32

the battle over Cop Killer, no

21:34

one could point to a single incident in which

21:36

rappers had directly incited violent behavior.

21:40

That changed when Ronald Ray Howard killed Texas

21:42

State Trooper Bill Davidson. Here's

21:45

Howard's defense attorney, Alan Tanner. The

21:48

prosecutor in the case, his name

21:50

was Bobby Bell, called me one

21:52

day when I was in Houston and said,

21:55

we found some recordings

21:57

that were in the vehicle that Ronald Howard

22:00

was in, and I think you'd be really

22:02

interested in hearing them, And

22:04

so I said okay, and he said

22:07

drive them down here Jackson County, and

22:09

we're listening to him. So Tanner heard

22:11

the tape, including the song Soldier's

22:13

Story. That song describes

22:16

a traffic stop that ends with a gunshot

22:18

playoffs. So I

22:21

failed till my dodge him, band

22:24

left, and

22:26

I blast on the funk games.

22:29

Now I got a murder case. It's

22:32

Tanner listened. He realized he could

22:34

argue the Tupac's words had gotten inside

22:36

of Ronald Ray Howard's head. I

22:38

didn't know what gangster rote music was at

22:40

the time, but you know, here was a

22:42

young kid from Houston who had

22:45

had problems with police in his neighborhood,

22:48

and I was kind of

22:50

fascinated by this music that

22:53

he was listening to. And

22:55

that's where I got the idea

22:58

to, you know, use that as a

23:00

potential defense as

23:03

to why all of this happened. As

23:07

soon as the press reported Ronald Ray Howard

23:10

had been listening to Tupocalypse Now, Tupac

23:13

replaced Ice Tea as America's

23:15

most dangerous rapper. Dan

23:17

Quayle jumped back into the fray,

23:19

demanding that time Warner pulled Apocalypse

23:21

Now from stores. Once again,

23:24

we're faced with an irresponsible

23:27

corporate act. There

23:30

is absolutely no reason for a record

23:32

like this to be published by a

23:34

responsible corporation. T

23:37

Apocalypse Now didn't end up getting pulled,

23:39

but Tupac was now part of a national

23:41

story. He was twenty one years old,

23:44

he'd appeared in one movie and released

23:47

one album. Now the Vice

23:49

president was calling him a villain and

23:51

a menace. Here's

23:53

Andrea Dennis, the co author of

23:56

Rap on Trial. I

23:58

think Tupac helped solidify

24:00

the perspective of police and law enforcement that gangster

24:03

rap is violent. Gangster rappers

24:05

are violent. There

24:07

was no dispute about Ronalay Howard's guilt.

24:10

Alan Tanner conceded that reality in his

24:12

opening statement. There's

24:14

no doubt about it. Ronald Howard is

24:17

going to be convicted of capital murder, he

24:19

told the jury, and he was

24:21

right. On June eighth, nineteen

24:23

ninety three, jurors found Howard

24:26

guilty in less than an hour. The

24:30

only part of the trial that was truly contested

24:32

was the penalty phase. Would

24:35

Howard get a life sentence a lethal

24:37

injection. In a

24:39

jailhouse interview, Howard said the Tupac

24:41

song was so intoxicating that it

24:43

had driven him to murder. He

24:46

told a reporter. The music

24:48

was up as loud as it could go, with gunshots

24:50

and siren noises on it, and my heart

24:52

was pounding hard. I was so

24:55

hyped up. I just snapped Tenor

24:58

asked the twelve members of the jury, only

25:00

one of whom was black, to consider

25:03

the possibility the Tupac had made

25:05

his client snap. He then played

25:07

a series of gangster rap songs for the

25:10

The judge wore it plux. Why the music played.

25:13

They all had a lyric book and

25:15

they were able to follow through with the words

25:18

as to each song. And we

25:20

played like fifteen songs from

25:24

Tupac and from the Ghetto Boys,

25:27

and I think maybe Nwa

25:30

and maybe a gangster nip,

25:33

I remember. But the jurors

25:35

heard all all the lyrics, and they

25:37

heard, I mean, we blasted the

25:39

courtroom. It was loud, they heard everything.

25:42

Houston Chronicle reporter Roy Bragg remembers

25:45

how stressful things were at the Austin Courthouse.

25:49

You had this throbbing, massive

25:51

anger in the crowd, these state

25:53

troopers and mister Howard's family and

25:57

you know, security everywhere, and

26:00

it was just really intense the

26:04

whole time. The tension

26:06

grew as the jury continued to deliberate,

26:09

and so at that point, when the jury's out

26:11

now for more than one day, even

26:13

beyond lunch, now

26:16

it's an even bigger story, because now

26:18

why is the jury out this long? The

26:21

sense was, you know things are going, you

26:24

know, we're hurling into the sun because we're not

26:26

gonna execute this guy. The

26:31

jury twice said they were hopelessly deadlocked.

26:34

The judge sent them back in, and then

26:36

they folded after like six days.

26:39

I don't know why they folded. On

26:43

the sixth day of deliberations July

26:45

fourteenth, nineteen ninety three, the

26:48

jurors sentence Ronald Ray Howard to death. He

26:51

was executed twelve years later. Another

26:56

lawyer tried to blame rap defense in nineteen

26:58

ninety five, after two Milwaukee

27:00

teenagers shot and killed a police officer.

27:03

This time, the defense pointed to Tupac's

27:05

guest verse on a song by South Central Cartel.

27:08

The attorney for one of the boys said the Tupac's

27:11

violet anti police lyrics appear

27:13

to have acted as command hallucinations, which

27:15

influenced his behavior. The

27:18

strategy didn't work that time either. Both

27:21

of the teenagers were convicted and sentenced

27:23

to long prison terms. Back

27:25

in Texas, Bill Davidson's widow

27:28

blamed Tupac and his music for

27:30

the trooper's death. Well,

27:32

we've been through has been devastating to

27:34

hear how my husband was killed,

27:38

and I feel like company

27:41

should be responsible for all out before

27:43

the products that they produced and self.

27:47

The day after Ronald Ray Howard was sentenced

27:49

to die, Linda Sued Davidson

27:52

moved forward with a lawsuit against Tupac,

27:54

Time Warner, and Interscope Records.

27:58

By the time Tupac was deposed in that lawsuit,

28:00

he was doing time for sexually abusing Guyana

28:03

Jackson, the case we talked about in our

28:05

previous episode. In

28:07

a meeting room in the Clinton Correctional Institution,

28:10

Tupacs sparred with Linda Sue, Davidson's

28:12

attorney about whether his songs encourage

28:15

violence against police. Tupacs

28:17

that the message in his music was clear, was

28:20

that your intention to try to get

28:22

young black people to be violent

28:26

to police. No, were

28:29

you trying to provoke anybody to do

28:31

anything particular? Were

28:35

you trying to jack Volk or trying

28:37

to get people to do things? Yes, tell

28:39

us what think he's

28:42

your head? Next

28:48

week on Slowburn, Who

28:51

Shot You? Slowburn

29:04

is a production of Slate Plus. Slates membership

29:07

program. You can sign up for

29:09

Slate Plus to hear a bonus episode of the show

29:11

this week. In every week this season,

29:14

and this week's bonus episode, you'll

29:16

hear more about how rap lyrics have been used as

29:18

criminal evidence in court. I

29:20

talked with law professor Andrea Dennis about

29:22

how cops and prosecutors have used

29:24

Tupacs songs and other hip hop music

29:26

to convict and incarcerat men of color.

29:29

To hear it, sign up for Slate Plus

29:31

at slate dot com Slash

29:34

Slowburn. Slowburn

29:36

is produced by me and Christopher Johnson,

29:38

with editorial direction by Josh Levine

29:41

and Gabriel Ross. Sophie Summergrat

29:43

as our researcher, our mix engineers.

29:45

Jared Paul don Will composed

29:47

our theme song. The artwork for Slowburn

29:50

is by Lisa Larson Walker Special

29:52

thanks to Slave's Child, to Derek

29:54

Johnson, Katie Rayford, Low

29:57

and Low, Alison Benedict and

29:59

Jared Holt. Thanks to

30:02

Nine Australia and journalist David

30:04

for some of the audio you heard of this episode.

30:07

And by the way, we created a playlist

30:09

on Spotify to go with this season. We'll

30:11

be update to Get each week with new episodes

30:13

and songs by Tupac, Biggie and their

30:16

collaborators. Check it out every

30:18

week at the link in the show notes. Thanks

30:20

for listening, Peace,