Less than three weeks before Neeko Mitchell was shot to death outside a Rexdale community centre, a rap video appeared on YouTube. It featured the man accused of ordering his murder boasting his “goons shoot when I say so.”It was one of 10 rap videos prosecutors wanted to use in their case against Jermaine Dunkley, an admitted Toronto gang leader and rapper who denies having anything to do with the Nov. 24, 2013, killing.But a judge denied the Crown’s request to show the videos at Dunkley’s first-degree murder trial, saying they were “extremely prejudicial” and presented him in a “threatening and unfavourable light.” As a result, the jury began deliberations Sunday without seeing them presented as evidence against him — although the judge allowed several short lyrical excerpts.It’s the latest Canadian criminal case to put rap music on trial, a practice defence lawyers and criminologists malign as an unfair way to incriminate young, disadvantaged Black males drawn to a music and “gangster” lifestyle that is not necessarily a reflection of reality. The sweeping exclusion appears unusual. A 2016 academic paper calling for a “rethinking” of the admissibility of rap found the genre’s lyrics were admitted in 16 of 36 Canadian criminal cases over the past decade, and excluded in four. The research, by University of Windsor law professor David Tanovich, noted court records did not indicate whether admissibility was contested.The just-retired Toronto jury must decide whether to accept the Crown’s allegations that Dunkley instructed members of his crew — called Monstarz — to kill Mitchell in retaliation for his brother Ricky Dunkley’s murder four months earlier in a Brampton banquet hall. Prosecutors allege Mitchell was shot because he was seen associating with Rico Gayle, the suspect in Ricky Dunkley’s murder, who was affiliated with a rival gang.Gayle ...
|
