Jasmine Ross

Volume 28.2 (download PDF)

Abstract

In the last few years news headlines have been filled with stories of high-profile trials in which celebrity rappers like Young Thug, Tekashi 6ix9ine (now “6IX9INE”) and Bobby Shmurda have been confronted by prosecutors with lyrics they wrote. Of course, the use of rap lyrics in these trials is no accident. Since the 1990s criminal defendants who happen to pen rap lyrics are increasingly likely to have their lyrics admitted against them at trial. This is happening all over the country—in federal and state courts—at every stage of criminal proceedings. This Note will focus on the use of rap lyrics at trial in cases where a defendant has been charged with gang-related crimes.

Despite rap lyrics being creative expressions and not always depicting real events, prosecutors have successfully admitted them to prove that a defendant did the crime with which he is charged or to demonstrate his unethical character to a jury. Rap lyrics are admitted at trial at higher rates than any other music genre. Black and Latinx men are also the demographic most likely to have their rap lyrics admitted against them. Thus, prosecutors’ fixation on rap lyrics demonstrates the racism that animates the entire criminal justice system.

In addition to briefly discussing the cases of Young Thug, Tekashi 6ix9ine and Bobby Shmurda, this Note will spotlight stories from lesserknown defendant-rappers across the country who have had their lyrics used against them at trial. In all these cases, prosecutors used Federal Rules of Evidence 401 and 403 or their state-specific corollaries to introduce rap lyrics into evidence. This Note will examine the various arguments prosecutors and defense attorneys make regarding whether these rules should admit or preclude rap lyrics from evidence. Finally, this Note will examine proposed or implemented reforms across the country that either make it more difficult for prosecutors to admit lyrics or categorically ban the admission of rap lyrics into evidence.

Zane McNeill & Riley Clare Valentine

Volume 27.2 (download PDF)

Abstract

This paper compares both Hungary’s and the United States’ treatment of journalists’ freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Journalists in both Hungary and the United States face specific threats to these freedoms. Journalists face political pressure in Hungary and animosity and scrutiny in the United States under private consolidation. Additionally, coverage that is critical of the state and supports marginalized communities faces heightened scrutiny. Nonetheless, we contend that journalists within the United States have potential options in protecting their freedom of expression such as those indicated in Rodriguez-Cotto v. Pierluisi-Urrutia.

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Katherine I. Puzone

Volume 27.2 (download PDF)

Abstract

A recent study entitled The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story published by The Human Rights Center for Girls, the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Ms. Foundation for Women highlighted the correlation between high rates of sexual abuse of girls and girls’ involvement in the juvenile justice system. Sexual abuse is one of the most accurate predictors of girls’ entry into the juvenile justice system. Girls under eighteen are at very high risk of becoming victims of sexual violence. One in four American girls will experience some sort of sexual violence before the age of eighteen. Fifteen percent of victims of sexual assault are under the age of twelve. Girls between the ages of sixteen and nineteen are four times more likely to be victims of sexual assault. Tragically, many of these victims end up as defendants in the juvenile justice system for behavior that is a direct result of the trauma they suffered. Victims of sexual abuse sometimes go on to commit sex offenses. This often requires registration as a sex offender which mandates registration for children as young as fourteen. This article proposes an exemption to registration for children who have been victims of sexual abuse. Recidivism rates for juvenile sex offenders are significantly lower than those for adult sex offenders. This is largely because children’s brains are still developing. Exempting victims of sexual abuse from registration as a sex offender is consistent with goals of therapeutic jurisprudence and would give young victims a chance to start their adult life without being labeled as a sex offender.

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Tara Eisenberg, Althea Lamel, Lindsay Matheos, Carolyn Weldy, and Andrea McArdle

Volume 27.1 (download PDF)

Abstract

By executive order on February 16, 2023, New York City Mayor Eric Adams created the position of the City’s Chief Public Realm Officer to promote a more centralized and coordinated approach to public realm policy, and appointed a chief strategy officer from his own staff, Ya-Ting Liu, to fill this position. This Article argues that the City should view the role of the Public Realm Office expansively and proactively to help achieve meaningful, equity-enhancing progress in stewarding public space. The authors, former students and a faculty member of CUNY School of Law’s Land Use and Community Lawyering seminar, offer a constellation of ideas for consideration. These include opening up and greening vacant spaces, even for temporary use, while simultaneously urging approaches to address the paradox that adding green infrastructure to environmentally degraded areas often imposes the side effects of gentrifying them, elevating land values, drawing in new residents, and driving out the very community members who should have benefited from the initial improvements. The ideas developed here also discuss the benefit of enhancing support—both financial and logistical, including through the donation of public land—for the expansion of community land trusts (“CLTs”) that function outside of the speculative market. Lastly, this idea bank offers proposals for using the public realm to enhance digital equity.

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Athena D. Mutua

Volume 27.1 (download PDF)

Abstract

The Dobbs decision has been leaked. Gathered outside of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, pro-choice protesters chant: “Not the church, not the state, the people must decide their fate.” A white man wearing a New York Fire Department sweatshirt and standing on the front steps responds: “I am the people, I am the people, I am the people, the people have decided, the court has decided, you lose . . . . You have no choice. Not your body, not your choice, your body is mine and you’re having my baby.”

Despicable but not unexpected, this man’s comments provide insight into the meaning of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the conditions it creates for women, girls, and others capable of pregnancy. Despite the Supreme Court’s assertions that it is returning the decision of abortion back to “the people,” a disingenuous concept from the start, American society currently finds itself facing dueling judicial opinions about whether individuals can access abortion medication (mifepristone) to exercise control over their own bodies and lives. This Article is an exegesis of the statements of this man. His statements and the instincts that support them tell us a great deal about the condition of U.S. society, the state of our democracy, and the relationship of both to the concrete meaning of Dobbs and its “theory of life.” Continue reading →

Kimberly Fong

Volume 26.2 (download PDF)

Abstract

New York City will soon have the distinction of constructing one of the tallest jails—if not the tallest—in the world. The jail will be a new addition to New York City’s skyline at 295 feet tall, even taller than Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. As part of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to close Rikers Island as a detention center, this jail is part of the Borough-Based Jail Program intended to accommodate a smaller jail population in four smaller jails located in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. The impetus for closing Rikers came in part from increased concern that pretrial detention has a disproportionately harmful impact on Black and Latinx people. Former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara’s report on abuses of detainees by Rikers staff put the public on greater notice of the conditions at Rikers. High-profile deaths, such as Kalief Browder’s death by suicide after his three-year detention for allegedly stealing a backpack and Layleen Polanco’s death after suffering an epileptic seizure in solitary confinement, further put a spotlight on Rikers’s culture of abuse against detainees. Under this plan, the massive “mega jail” or “jailscraper” will replace the Manhattan Detention Complex in Manhattan’s historic Chinatown.

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Kyuwon Shim, Michelle David, and Susana Lorenzo-Giguere

Volume 26.2 (download PDF)

Abstract

Under Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”), any voter who is blind, disabled, or unable to read or write is entitled to assistance to vote by a person of the voter’s choice. Section 208 guarantees that such voter may choose a person they trust to assist them in navigating the voting process and cast a ballot, with only two limitations: To prevent financial influence on the voter’s ballot choices, the assistor cannot be the voter’s employer or union representative. In Texas, this law protects millions of limited-English proficient (“LEP”), disabled, and illiterate citizens. In 2015, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (“AALDEF”) filed suit against Texas under Section 208 of the VRA, challenging the state’s voter assistance laws. These laws prohibited interpreters from providing voter assistance if they were not registered to vote in the same county as the voter needing assistance. The laws also limited voter assistance solely to marking and reading the ballot; this limitation prohibited assistors from answering clarifying questions about the ballot or otherwise providing basic information about the voting process as a whole, information upon which many Asian Americans and voters who are LEP, disabled, or illiterate relied.

In 2017, the Fifth Circuit ruled on Texas’s appeal of AALDEF’s successful 2015 Section 208 challenge to Texas’s voter assistance laws. Preempting Texas’s county residence requirement for voter assistance, the Fifth Circuit also rejected Texas’s narrow interpretation that Section 208 assistance was only permissible for marking and reading the ballot. On remand, the district court permanently enjoined Texas from enforcing its voter assistance laws, among other forms of relief, that limited assistance to merely marking and reading the ballot. Three years later, in the wake of the 2020 election, Texas legislators enacted another broad set of voting restrictions through Senate Bill 1 (“S.B. 1”). Brazenly, S.B. 1 required assistors to take an oath limiting their assistance to merely marking and reading the ballot and used identical language from the Texas Election Code that the district court had enjoined in 2018. This Article delves into AALDEF’s 2022 success modifying the 2018 permanent injunction to strike down S.B. 1’s voter assistance restriction.

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Deema Nagib

Volume 26.2 (download PDF)

Abstract

The United States incarcerates approximately 2 million people on any given day, more than any other country in the world. Over the years, we’ve seen growing emphasis on the rights and human needs of the incarcerated. Specifically, there have been growing movements to end the use of solitary confinement; reduce or eliminate the costs of phone calls, visits, and other methods of communication; end prison slavery and implement living wages for incarcerated people; and increase opportunities for education and other meaningful programming. However, little emphasis has been placed on an incarcerated person’s right and ability to be sexual. A desire for sexual intimacy, like many other human needs, does not disappear with incarceration. People who are in prison should have the right to explore their sexuality and sexual intimacy with consenting partners, regardless of their incarceration. To ignore this is to ignore an integral part of incarcerated individuals’ humanity. This Article argues that incarcerated individuals do have a substantive due process right to have sex with a consenting partner, regardless of marital status, which stems from their fundamental right to make decisions regarding their bodily autonomy.

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