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android wrote:
Suppose you got invited onto Willie Nelsons tour bus to meet Willie. While you're on the bus, DEA raids it. They find an oz of pot under the sink. You're carrying. Now you're charged with drug possession and carrying a gun while in possession of the pot. It *must* be your pot because you were the closest to the sink when they raided the bus.

Of course he's not going to get a fair judgment here, since he's black and he's a rapper.

You have a point, with the first thing, but the second is pretty ridiculous. Lil Wayne has made many comments about smoking/dealing drugs. So its a little hard to push the "he's just an innocent black man trying to make a living" thing when he's admitted to crimes in the past. Just throwing that one out there.

Please, don't make this into a thread about race.

Thanks for the Willie Nelson mention. Remember a couple of years ago when his tour bus was stopped on I-10 in Louisiana? Police found a pound and a half (!) of marijuana on the bus. Willie, his sister, and a couple of others received citations for misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Louisiana law is that any amount for personal consumption is a misdemeanor, but any amount (no matter how small) for sale is a felony.

I think we all know that 1.5 pounds is just a good travel stash for Willie's bus.

android wrote:Suppose you got invited onto Willie Nelsons tour bus to meet Willie.

Because there's no difference between a visitor and the bus owner.

Dudley wrote:

android wrote:Suppose you got invited onto Willie Nelsons tour bus to meet Willie.

Because there's no difference between a visitor and the bus owner.

Do you really think most cops will care?
If there are drugs on the bus, everybody on the bus is guilty. That's the way they think.

<blatant stereotyping follows, so sue me...>
I honestly doubt you will find a tour bus full of musicians without some sort of drugs on it. Unless maybe it's gospel, but even then I wouldn't bet any money on it. So I'm sure cops are constantly looking for any excuse possible to board and search one.

And I don't care. Do I want airline pilots, brain surgeons and semi drivers on drugs, no way. I make my living developing software, so I'm not going to fry my brain either. But musicians getting high and strumming out a few tunes on a bus driven by a designated driver with a chauffeur's license doesn't really bother me. (as long as he doesn't inhale! )

74novaman wrote: Lil Wayne has made many comments about smoking/dealing drugs. So its a little hard to push the "he's just an innocent black man trying to make a living" thing when he's admitted to crimes in the past. Just throwing that one out there.

So I have never heard of this guy until this thread, so I'm not a fan of him or his type of music.

But we run the laws in this country on evidence. One of the reasons I don't like rap and hip hop is because it idolizes drugs and gangs. But it is his image, and just because he says stuff doesn't make it so. Just because I write a novel about blowing up New York doesn't make me a terrorist. We are free to "judge" a persons reputation and whether we want to listen to their songs, but that judgment should not effect rules of evidence in a court of law. Otherwise we're just as guilty as the cops who fake evidence on the basis of "well, if he didn't do *this*, he's still guilty of something..."