Zaevion Dobson murder trial, starting Monday, poses debate: Rap as art or evidence?

The December 2015 shooting death of Zaevion Dobson became a symbol for street violence and gun crime across the nation and, in Knoxville, an indictment of gang violence.

Now, the attorney for one of three young men standing trial this week in that slaying is painting some symbolism of his own — the right of rap artists and rap fans to express themselves.

“It would chill the speech of thousands of other musicians and artists,” attorney T. Scott Jones wrote of prosecutors’ efforts to use a rap video as evidence.

Gang label attached

Christopher Drone Bassett, 22, Richard Gregory Williams III, 23, and Kipling Colbert Jr., 22, are set to stand trial beginning Monday in Knox County Criminal Court on felony murder charges in Dobson’s slaying.

Dobson, a 15-year-old Fulton High School football player, wasn’t a gang member, but police immediately labeled his slaying gang-related. It bore all the signs: Two carloads of young, black men parked on a street in Lonsdale and began shooting after an earlier shooting in East Knoxville, rival gang territory. It was a mirror image of a fatal shooting in Lonsdale two decades earlier of a 5-year-old girl playing on the sidewalk.

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Like Brittany Daniels in that earlier slaying, Dobson was innocent, and witnesses said he gave his life shielding two girls. Then-President Barack Obama cited Dobson’s death and heroism in his State of the Union address. ESPN filmed a documentary. Dobson’s mother and siblings were feted at the ESPY Awards.

But unlike the young men convicted in Daniels' death and verified through a police ranking system as gang members, Bassett is a high school graduate who had attended Carson-Newman College, and testimony has shown police cannot find evidence enough to label Bassett a gang member.

Police have a stronger case of gang membership against Williams and Colbert, testimony and records have shown. Williams has already been convicted of trying to kill a witness in the Dobson shooting whom he believed was a “snitch,” testimony in that case showed.

‘Pull up. Pop out.’

Gang membership itself isn’t a crime. But prosecutors TaKisha Fitzgerald and Phil Morton want to show jurors a video posted on YouTube seven months before Dobson was fatally shot. It shows several young, black men, including, at times, Bassett, Williams and Colbert, lip syncing to a rap song pledging allegiance to the Bloods street gang and describing street violence.

Though not required to do so, the pair say they need to show jurors Dobson’s death was the result of gang rivalry. Bassett, in a statement to Knoxville Police Department investigator A.J. Loeffler, suggested the rivalry involved two suitors for the same young woman, not gang turf.

Bassett’s attorney, T. Scott Jones, has been fighting the use of the video for months as prejudicial. Judge Steve Sword has rejected Jones’ arguments. In his latest ruling, Sword said Jones’ continued push is “inappropriate” and rejected the First Amendment argument with a single sentence.

Jones, in turn, is demanding Sword scrub language in his order in which the judge wrote Bassett identified himself as a gang member in his statement to police. Jones attached a transcript of the statement as proof Bassett never did so.

Sword cited in an earlier ruling one of those rap lyrics as proof of its relevance to Dobson’s slaying.

One lyric says, "Pull up. Pop out. Everybody get down if you don’t wanna get smoked,” Sword wrote. “This is similar to the act and motivation the state alleges occurred in this case.”

Folsom Prison Blues

Jones' latest motion detailed his First Amendment beef with using a rap video as evidence in a murder trial.

“In this case, treating Mr. Bassett’s artistic expression as confession and introducing either the video itself or select lyrics as evidence against Mr. Bassett would create an intolerable risk that Mr. Bassett will be punished not for committing crime but for rapping about crime,” Jones wrote.

Bassett is seen in the five-minute video for a period of 31 seconds. None of the young men are armed. There is no proof, according to Jones’ motion and prior testimony, Bassett or the other young men wrote the song or sang it. Knox County Sheriff’s Office Detective Tom Walker, used by prosecutors as a gang expert, couldn’t identify it.

The lyrics lip synched by Bassett and his friends are, according to Jones, fictional. He likened the violence in the song to the violence in a country classic — "Folsom Prison Blues."

“There is no more evidence that Mr. Bassett is a gang member than there is that Johnny Cash ‘shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,’ ” Jones wrote.

Sword has refused to allow an appeal before trial.

Expanded jury pool

Sword is drawing in a much larger jury pool than typical because of Dobson’s fame in death. He held a pre-screening session last month. Potential jurors were given questionnaires to try to root out any biases.

Bassett told Loeffler that Colbert was with him, Williams and Brandon Perry when two carloads of young men opened fire on a crowd of young people in Lonsdale as retaliation for a shooting hours earlier at Perry's mother's home.

Perry's mother was struck by the gunfire. Perry himself was slain in another retaliation shooting soon after Dobson was killed. His slaying remains unsolved.

Although witnesses reported at least a half-dozen shooters, only Bassett, Williams and Colbert have been charged.