Justin Baldoni’s lawyer says defendants are ‘very good people’ as Blake Lively lawsuit narrows

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Judge threw out 10 of Lively’s 13 claims against her It Ends With Us director and co-star on Thursday as trial nears Justin Baldoni’s lawyers have responded after most of Blake Lively ’s claims against the director were dismissed by a federal judge on Thursday. Judge Lewis Liman threw out 10 of the 13 claims that Lively had made against Baldoni and others, including allegations of sexual harassment, conspiracy and defamation. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/QbFUo4B via IFTTT
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‘It has become a sort of silver bullet’: why are rap lyrics being put on trial?

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In compelling documentary As We Speak, a controversial legal practice that uses rap lyrics to secure convictions is explored

In September 2001, McKinley Phipps Jr, also known as the rapper Mac, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter. It had been a year and a half since gunfire erupted outside a club where he was slated to perform in Slidell, Louisiana, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. Phipps, then 22, maintained his innocence, and the case against him was weak – there was no gun linking him to the crime, several witnesses recanted their testimony and another person confessed to pulling the trigger. And yet, prosecutors had their trump card: Mac, a former New Orleans rap prodigy who began releasing music at the age of 13, had rapped about murder.

“Murder, murder, kill, kill”, Phipps recites in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a new documentary on the criminalization of rap lyrics. Prosecutors spliced that line with one from a different song – “Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head” – to create the portrait of a killer; Mac’s art was the evidence that DNA, solid confessions, or a missing weapon couldn’t provide. An all-white jury bought it. Phipps served over 21 years in prison before being granted clemency in 2021.

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