White Prosecutor Misquoted Hip Hop Lyrics to All White Jury to Convict Mac Phipps

HuffPost

As he lies at night in his cell at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, McKinley "Mac" Phipps can hear the words of his best-known song echoing in his head:

Murda, murda (murder, murder)

Kill, kill (kill, kill)

S**t's real (s**t's real)

On the battlefield (on the battlefield)

In the late '90s, on the verge of stardom, the young hip-hop artist was known as "Mac the Camouflage Assassin." Master P had signed him to No Limit Records, alongside Snoop Dogg and Mystikal. He was a member of the 504 Boyz, and their 2000 album, "Goodfellas," went gold, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

Then, on Feb. 21, 2000, at a show just outside New Orleans, a concertgoer was shot, Phipps was charged with first-degree murder and everything slipped away. He was just 22 years old.

The prosecution had no forensic evidence. They didn't even bother to perform ballistics on what could have been the murder weapon. Five of the prosecution's witnesses told The Huffington Post in an exclusive report that they were bullied by authorities to lie.

But the prosecutors did have one great weapon to use against Phipps -- his words -- and they wielded them like a club, selectively misquoting his lyrics and taking them out of context, to incriminate the defendant.

In the cement room where Phipps now resides, he doesn't hear himself singing "Murda, Murda, Kill, Kill." He hears the botched version that Assistant District Attorney Bruce Dearing recited to jurors -- part of the closing argument to a case that leaves Phipps just halfway through a 30-year sentence.

"I didn’t have any criminal history for them to look into, so I guess they had to find some indication that [I have] a dark side," Phipps told HuffPost. "So that’s when they turned to the music." [MORE]