Lawyer: Student wrote rap lyrics not terror threat
Court Alerts
An aspiring rapper on trial over what authorities say was a note threatening a Virginia Tech-like killing spree set off "alarm bells" days before the writings surfaced on his college campus by pressing to get firepower he ordered from a gun dealer, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.
But an attorney for Olutosin Oduwole countered during a trial's opening statements in the 4-year-old case that his gun-loving client stood wrongly accused, saying the words at issue were innocent lyrics and other musings by a performer prone to compulsively log all of his thoughts on paper.
"This case is a very selective case," Justin Kuehn said on behalf of Oduwole, accused of attempting to make a terroristic threat and a weapons count linked to the loaded handgun police found a short time later in July 2007 in Oduwole's on-campus apartment at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.
"That 'note' is nothing more than a piece of scrap paper with private thoughts, the beginning of a song," Kuehn insisted. "Their key piece of evidence, the center point of their case, is a song."
Wednesday's differing scenarios by the prosecutors and defense previewed testimony that could leave jurors with a key decision: Whether Oduwole's questioned writings — found in his out-of-gas car just months after the Virginia Tech rampage that left 32 people dead along with the gunman — represented something potentially sinister or were lyrical stylings that were constitutionally protected free speech.
Kuehn told the all-white jury that witnesses on Oduwole's behalf may include what the defense describes as an expert in the study of rap and hip-hop music, along with that genre's culture.
The trial's stakes are high: Oduwole, 26 and free on bond, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the threat-related count.
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