Verdict Is Guilty in 2 Live Crew’s Rap Album Sale

An all-white jury Wednesday convicted a Ft. Lauderdale record store owner of obscenity for selling a sexually explicit album by the rap group 2 Live Crew.

The guilty verdict is believed to be the first conviction in the United States of selling an obscene musical work.

“I’m absolutely stunned,” said Bruce Rogow, attorney for the store owner, Charles Freeman. “This is going to have a chilling effect on the industry, and sends a message to all music stores that they are at risk unless they’re selling Mantovani.”

Record industry executives also expressed shock and vowed to help Freeman appeal. “The target (of the prosecution) is a black form of music and the real victim is freedom of expression,” said Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

But Jack Thompson, the Coral Gables, Fla., anti-obscenity crusader who initiated the national campaign against 2 Live Crew’s “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” album last January, called the verdict “a victory for women and children.”

“This verdict sends a clear message to the record industry that they better stop distributing obscene records that degrade women,” Thompson said in a telephone interview. “If they don’t, it will be a short trip up the distribution food chain to the boardrooms of the major record labels.”

Freeman was arrested by an undercover police officer June 8, two days after a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the album violated community obscenity standards, thereby banning its sale in three South Florida counties.

Freeman was tried on the misdemeanor charge before a county judge in Ft. Lauderdale. He faces a possible one-year jail sentence and a $1,000 fine. Sentencing was set for Nov. 2.

Three members of the rap group have also been charged with performing obscene material at a June 11 nightclub show in nearby Hollywood. Their trial is set for Tuesday.

The album, filled with graphic references to sex acts, has brought renown and fortune to the Miami-based rap group. The album, which has sold over 2 million copies, has also touched off a national debate over issues of artistic freedom, community standards and race.

Luther Campbell, leader of 2 Live Crew, has long contended that he and his music have been singled out for prosecution by white judges and law enforcement officers who don’t understand it.

Additional obscenity prosecutions of record store owners who sold the album, including the 140-store Sound Warehouse chain--the first corporate prosecution--are scheduled to begin in Texas in coming months.

In February, a record store owner in Alexander City, Ala., was acquitted of obscenity for selling the album.

The Ft. Lauderdale jury returned its verdict after 2 1/2 hours of deliberation. Forty-five minutes later, Freeman was back behind the counter of his store, E-C Records, in northwest Ft. Lauderdale, and he was angry.

“That was not a jury of my peers,” said Freeman, 31, who is black. “They don’t even know where my store is. (The record) is vulgar, it’s nasty, but it’s not obscene. If you think this music induces you to have sex or something, you got to be joking.”

Freeman’s trial opened Monday with prosector Leslie Robson saying: “I urge you to listen to the evidence.” For the next 90 minutes, the six jurors and one alternate sat in stony-faced silence as the bass-heavy rap songs pulsed through the packed courtroom.

To convict Freeman, jurors had to find that the album is obscene, meaning it offended community standards, appealed to a morbid interest in sex, and lacked artistic merit and value.

In defense of his client, Rogow, a professor of law at Nova University and a specialist in first amendment issues, told the jurors, “One person’s vulgarity is another person’s art.” He argued that rap music reflected and parodied black street language, and clearly had artistic merit.

The defense was rebuffed in its efforts to introduce into evidence other rap records, including works by the Geto Boys and Ice Cube, sexually explicit magazines and a XXX-rated video that Rogow said would give jurors an idea of what real pornography is like.

But the defense was able to put on the stand two music critics and a psychologist to testify that 2 Live Crew’s music was art and not injurious to community standards.

“I have heard people tell me that they may put music on to create a mood--a little Johnny Mathis and a little wine,” said psychologist Merry S. Haber. “But I have never heard anybody say they were turned on by rap music.”

Rogow said an appeal of the verdict was likely on several grounds, including the judge’s instructions to the jury, the inability to present certain evidence, and the fact that only one of the 35 persons in the jury pool was black.

“This is music from the streets, made by black people,” said Rogow. “But to this jury of six white people, it came from a foreign country. They were so overwhelmed by the words, they couldn’t hear anything else. We really have a clash of cultures here in terms of age, sex and race.”

None of the six jurors who convicted Freeman would comment afterward. But alternate Sheryl Salomon said: “I was very offended by (the record), especially by the lyrics. But I have to question whether or not there is artistic value. It’s music, it’s still music.”

Clary reported from Miami and Philips from Los Angeles.