Prosecutors can use YouTube music videos made by the leaders of a Brooklyn drug gang known as With each other Forever Mafia against them at their upcoming racketeering trial, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The TF Mafia videos on YouTube involve titles such as “Smell Murder,” “Hustler Anthem,” “TF Mafia — My Mobb” and “Brooklyn Zoo — Boo,” according to court papers.
Judge Kiyo Matsumoto’s choice to let the video evidence to be employed against defendants Michael (Rab) Garrett and Paul Rivera is the newest in a expanding physique of situations nationwide in which defendants who rap about criminal conduct on video see it come back to bite them.
“The court finds that excerpts of videos depicting the defendants with firearms, cash and drugs are very probative to the weapons-connected charges, narcotics trafficking and dollars-laundering charges,” Matsumoto wrote in the choice.
“The defendants may possibly provide proof at trial . . . that the weapons, money and drugs depicted are ‘props,’ but it is up to the jury to weigh this proof and make a decision what is depicted,” she stated.
Lawyers for Garrett and Rivera had argued that the videos are merely fictionalized dramatizations, boasting and part of the gangsta rap genre.
But the footage of a Jan. 18, 2012, car quit on a Pennsylvania highway in which drugs had been located in Rivera’s car or truck was definitely reality Television.
The judge will also enable excerpts of the video depicting Garrett discussing the arrests of the occupants of Rivera’s auto with a lawyer, and Garrett’s girlfriend discussing with him whether or not any of them may perhaps be cooperating with law enforcement.
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