TRENTON — The state Supreme Court ruled today that notebooks filled with gangster rap lyrics written by a man accused of attempted murder cannot be used as evidence to help prove a motive. 
 
 A trial court convicted Vonte Skinner of shooting and paralyzing a drug dealer, Lamont Peterson, during a 2005 incident in Willingboro Township — based in part on pages of violent and graphic rap lyrics that police found in a car Skinner was driving at the time. 
 
 An appellate court later threw out Skinner's conviction, saying the judge shouldn't have allowed prosecutors for the state to read the lyrics to the jury. 
 
 The Supreme Court voted 6-0 today to uphold the appellate ruling and ordered a new trial for Skinner. 
 
 Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote that using the lyrics as evidence was "highly prejudicial," "bore little or no probative value" as to any motive in the shooting, and "risked poisoning the jury." 
 
 "One would not presume that Bob Marley, who wrote the well-known song 'I Shot the Sheriff,' actually shot a sheriff, or that Edgar Allan Poe buried a man beneath his floorboards, as depicted in his short story 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' simply because of their respective artistic endeavors on those subjects," LaVecchia wrote. "The Court reasons that defendant's lyrics should receive no different treatment." 
 
 Civil liberties advocates watched the case closely, saying lyrics are a form of artistic expression and should be protected as free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey wrote a brief in Skinner's support, arguing that rap lyrics are "often a vehicle for social and political commentary" and that admitting these as evidence would run "the risk of chilling otherwise valuable speech." 
 
 Skinner was convicted in 2008 of shooting Peterson seven times at close range, leaving the victim paralyzed from the waist down. Peterson testified that he and Skinner sold drugs as part of a three-man team and that the shooting happened after an argument arose. 
 
 In his own testimony, Skinner said Peterson was shot by another man. 
 
 As part of the trial, prosecutors read from Skinner's lyrics, which depict shootings, knifings, and rapes. One verse read: "A (racial epithet) wouldn't listen so I hit him with the Smithen; hauled off 15 rounds, seven missed him; Two to the mask and six to the ribs, lifted and flipped him. The safe street squad found him, half his shell mission." 
 
 But prosecutors did not tell jurors when Peterson wrote them. All the lyrics were written "long before" the shooting — some four or five years before, according to the ruling. 
 
 Joseph Glyn, a state deputy attorney general, told the Supreme Court in April that the lyrics were evidence of Skinner's "continuing mindset." 
 
 "These lyrics explain why defendant did what he did," Glyn said. 
 
 Jason Coe, Skinner's public defender, argued that lyrics could be used as evidence only "when there are particular, detailed accounts about the crime charged." In Indiana, a man who killed his mother and placed her body in the trunk of a car wrote lyrics describing the same actions. The court admitted those words as evidence. 
 
 In today's opinion, LaVecchia wrote that lyrics can be used as evidence of guilt if they connect strongly to the details of the crime the defendant is charged with committing or if they mention the victim by name. But, she added, Skinner's lyrics did neither. 
 
 "The lyrics can only be regarded as fictional accounts," LaVecchia wrote. "The state has produced no evidence otherwise." 

 In 2005 prosecutors in New Jersey pointed to the violent rap lyrics written by a criminal suspect as evidence of that man's "motive and intent" to commit murder and other misdeeds. During the trial, those lyrics—which had zero connection to the actual crimes at issue—were read to the jury, which ultimately voted to convict the man of attempted murder. 
 
 In an opinion issued on Monday, the New Jersey Supreme Court nullified that verdict, ordering a new trial on the grounds that "the violent, profane, and disturbing rap lyrics authored by defendant constituted highly prejudicial evidence against him that bore little or no probative value as to any motive or intent behind the attempted murder offense with which he was charged." Unless such material has "a direct connection to the specifics of the offense," the court ruled, prosecutors are forbidden from introducing it as evidence. 
 
 The New Jersey Supreme Court got it right. As the ACLU noted in an amicus brief it filed in the case, "that a rap artist wrote lyrics seemingly embracing a world of violence is no more reason to ascribe to him a motive and intent to commit violent acts" than it would be "to indict Johnny Cash for having 'shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.'" 
 
 The New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling in State v. Skinner is available here.
– Disturbing though they may be, justices say, a man's violent rap lyrics can't be used as evidence that he tried to kill someone. New Jersey's Supreme Court reached a 6-0 decision in the case of Vonte Skinner, who is accused of shooting and paralyzing a man. Skinner wrote extensive violent rap lyrics, and they helped result in an initial conviction in the case. But an appellate court said the lyrics couldn't be used as evidence, and the high court agreed. Use of the lyrics is "highly prejudicial," the court said, and it could end up "poisoning the jury," the Star-Ledger reports. "One would not presume that Bob Marley, who wrote the well-known song 'I Shot the Sheriff,' actually shot a sheriff, or that Edgar Allan Poe buried a man beneath his floorboards, as depicted in his short story 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' simply because of their respective artistic endeavors on those subjects," Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote in the case. The court held that such evidence is only valid when it has "a direct connection to the specifics of the offense," Reason notes, applauding the decision. The court has ordered a new trial.