Texas Case Puts Rap Music On Trial Along With Killer

AUSTIN, Texas - Fourteen months after an inner-city Houston teenager aimed his 9mm gun at the neck of a Texas state trooper and pulled the trigger, the question before the court is this: Does life imitate rap?

The answer will be felt from the small Texas town of the trooper's widow to the jail cell of Ronald Ray Howard, a reputed cocaine dealer and seventh-grade dropout who killed the officer.

It's a high-stakes case that has raised numerous legal questions. They include how far the mantle of the First Amendment stretches and whether a rapper and his music distributor, like any other manufacturer, should be held liable for a product that the slain trooper's widow, Linda Davidson, contends led to her husband's death.

Howard's own life hinges on whether explicit anti-police lyrics of "gangsta" rappers like Tupac, Gangster NIP and the Geto Boys - his favorites - played a role in the April 11, 1992, murder of Trooper Bill Davidson.

If so, should Howard, 19, convicted of capital murder June 8, get life imprisonment instead of the death penalty because of such influences?

In a lawsuit, Davidson and her two children seek damages from Tupac, Interscope Records and Time Warner Inc. for gross negligence in writing and distributing music intended to "incite immediate lawless action."

Howard was listening to Tupac's "2pocalypse Now" tape just before and at the time of the shooting.

"It's a very tough thing to say to the public, but speech doesn't have to have high useful value to be protected. It just has to be speech," says Diane Zimmerman, a professor of tort and First Amendment law at New York University's Law School.

In fact, courts nationwide have virtually always held that the First Amendment protects artists and media distributors from liability in cases in which third parties were induced to commit a violent act because of something they watched, listened to or read.

However, the head of Texas' largest law-enforcement association, which initiated the boycott last year against Time Warner over Ice-T's controversial "Cop Killer" song, said music companies should be held liable.

"The music says it's OK to kill a police officer," said Ron DeLord, president of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas. "If you accept that these songs and messages influence people - and you would be silly to say they don't - why can't you recover under a products-liability argument? They had a choice not to produce this record. They put it on the market."

Howard's attorney, Allen Tanner, is using the influence of gangster rap as an issue in the criminal trial. He contends that the music, along with Howard's life in the bleak Houston ghetto of South Park, virtually destined the youth to a life of crime.

"The only people who are doing any good out of this music are the musicians and the big companies who are making millions of dollars," Tanner said.

Jackson County District Attorney Bobby Bell, who is prosecuting Howard in Austin after a change of venue, is seeking the death penalty.

"Whether or not it (gangster rap) caused him to shoot that trooper, I have no idea. But I can tell you this: It doesn't matter. It's not a defense. At best it's an explanation; it certainly isn't an excuse."

That Howard shot and killed Davidson was never contested. In repeated statements to authorities, friends and fellow inmates, Howard said he shot "the law" because he thought that the white trooper did not like blacks and because he feared getting arrested for driving a stolen truck.

A Travis County jury deliberated only 26 minutes before convicting the slim, quiet teenager. Now that jury must decide whether to sentence him to death or to life imprisonment.

The punishment phase began last week with the blasting beat of "gangsta" rap, played by Tanner for the four-woman, eight-man jury.

The mostly white, mostly middle-aged jurors shifted uncomfortably in their chairs as they listened to "Damned Shame," a grim story about South Park where "homeboys" have to pack pistols to survive violence inflicted by their own "brothers" and the police. "Trapped" tells a story of the hopelessness of living in a ghetto like South Park.

Tanner later described these songs as some of Howard's favorites, in part because they describe his upbringing in South Park.

"I just want the jurors to realize the type of music that was banging in Ronald Howard's head for about two or three years prior to this killing and on the night of the killing," said Tanner.

Linda Davidson said she wants the death penalty for Howard. She believes the teenager should be held responsible for his act regardless of any influences in his life.

"I feel like he felt like listening to this music, that it was OK to hate the cops, it was OK to kill the cops. These lyrics are inciting these kids, and I think it needs to be off the market."