Spring Break
Hip-hop undergoes mock trial
Rob Amaefule
Issue date: 10/19/07 Section: News
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Held in the Western Illinois University Union, the mock trial, "The People vs. Hip-hop," focused on the issue of hip-hop and its role in and influence on society.
Jury members consisted of the 42 spectators who witnessed the trial. They needed a preponderance of evidence to find the defense guilty of the charges.
Monica Allen, former lawyer and adviser of the local NAACP chapter, carried out the role of judge. The student defense team had three attorneys while the prosecution had two. The prosecution attempted to use the vulgarity in music lyrics and videos to exemplify the negative tone it may leave on impressionable youth.
Earl Bracey, Associate Vice President for Student Services, testified as part of the prosecution and mentioned that hip-hop is detrimental to not only the genre itself but to the black culture it represents.
"Most of my thoughts on African-Americans were generated by what I saw on TV," said juror Robert Surran, senior political science major. "Being an adolescent at the time, I'd usually watch MTV and see rap videos in which African-American rappers appear to promote gang-banging and drugs."
Surran said his lack of individual encounters with black people was due to his rural hometown. He said this led him to believe the depictions of blacks by the mainstream media were accurate.
The primary tactic the defense used in countering the testimonies was the fact that the testifying witnesses did not present sufficient information about the music to criticize it.
Senior African-American studies major and defense attorney Nicholas Crutcher ended all of his cross-examinations by asking the question, "What do you know about hip-hop?" Many of the witnesses either paused or admitted to not knowing much about it.
Jeffrey Arnold, a history major who also played a defense attorney, took the same approach, explaining to the jury how "it is impossible to judge or criticize something without taking any time to study it."
After the two-hour trial, the jury voted hip-hop was not guilty of the charges against it, which garnered a major round of applause from the jury. Even though Ronald Daniels, political science major who played a prosecuting attorney, said he felt the trial was hard-fought, he said defense had the better argument.
"They did a great job, but we clearly had the stronger case," he said. "I think that many members of the jury were fans of hip-hop so that created a little bias in the results of the vote."
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