Facing Possible Execution, What If Lil Boosie Were White??

Prosecutors in Baton Rouge, Louisiana still haven’t announced whether or not they’ll seek the death penalty against rapper Lil Boosie. As you know, Boosie is sitting in Angola State Prison, serving time on probation charges while awaiting trial on a murder charge.

If prosecutors opt to seek a capital murder conviction, which carries a death sentence, the stakes become immediately higher for Lil Boosie. And it marks an unprecedented moment in Hip Hop: A nationally known rapper actually facing the death penalty for a crime.

That a high-profile rapper could be put on death row begs a number of questions, none the least of which center around the justice system and the omnipresent racial question. Could a well-known White rapper accused of a murder be put to death under similar circumstances? Is a double standard at play here?

Lil Boosie has already been convicted of crimes in the past. And unlike many Hip Hop personalities, by all accounts, he has actually lived what he raps. So, glorified music aside, the system is handling him much in the way it handles other young Black men who are charged with serious crimes: Presumed guilty until proven innocent and slammed with the full weight of the justice system.

In a dreadfully ominous but hopefully just ironic twist, Lil Boosie is even being housed at the prison where the state’s death chamber is located: The notoriously gruesome Angola.

Of course, its not just in Louisiana that such a scenario unfolds. It happens across the country. But Louisiana, in particular, has become adept at dropping the hammer on its Hip Hop natives: You might recall that another well-established rapper, C-Murder, is sitting inside the same prison Lil Boosie is housed at–and he’s doing life on a murder charge.

C’s conviction followed a series of bizarre back and forth moves in the judicial system on the foundation of a case fraught with vanishing witnesses; an unexpected, temporary C-Murder person release; and accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. C-Murder is said to be appealing his case once again but prosecutors have promised to fight his release.

Lil Boosie’s case threatens to be much more challenging. Since his indictment, several of Boosie’s former friends have turned state’s evidence against him in exchange for what are expected to be more lenient sentences in their own cases. That information was made public during a time when never-substantiated rumors began circulating that it was Boosie who had been cooperating with police. Those rumors were cleared once court depositions came to light. But that has been just one minor piece of fortunate news for Boosie, if you can call it that. The rest has been pretty miserable.

The local press seems cool with reporting what Boosie’s family contend are glaring untruths about the circumstances of his case; one media outlet has even misstated that Boosie is currently serving a life sentence for murder, which he is not. Informed that the story was incorrect, the news station declined to retract or correct the statement. With that kind of press, one can only imagine what potential jurors now think of the rapper.

Even the Hip Hop press has dropped the ball as it pertains to Boosie. The Hip Hop media hasn’t asked any questions about the Lil Boosie case but that’s fairly typical. It seems more practical from their standpoint to just regurgitate press releases on his case status than explore the dynamics involved in any meaningful way.

In America, having any connection to Hip Hop and being charged with a crime mandates immediate suspicion. There’s a broad notion that Hip Hop and crime go hand in hand. You could say that Hip Hop’s euphoric embrace of thug life exacerbated that. But the irony is that many of the people who have helped give Hip Hop a criminal image have never even seen the inside of a jail cell. And that includes MANY rappers. Its a wicked case of life imitating art imitating life.

And all of that makes it hard for any rapper to defend a case in court: he’s not only having to proclaim his own innocence, but he’s fighting the stereotyping–deservedly or not–of an entire industry as well.

Lil Boosie will have his day in court but until then, his case and his life are languishing. The days are coming closer to his next court date in November, where its been reported that prosecutors will formally declare what they will seek against him. If they decide to seek the death penalty, and prove their case, then Boosie could end up on death row and could eventually be executed. Only Lil Boosie knows for sure if he’s innocent or guilty and its easy to use the race card in these situations but its hard to imagine Eminem, Mac Miller or Yelawolf in a similar situation.

(Photos: BoosieJustice/Web)