Some cases go to trial on a foundation of strong evidence. The Ohio police’s defamation suit against Afroman was not one of those cases. The case was dumb from the start; a bunch of eggshell ego-ed officers on a raid for drugs and human trafficking victims ransacked a rappers home. I mean that literally — their property damage includes breaking down doors, breaking the gate to his home, and stealing several thousand dollars in cash. All of this was caught on Afroman’s home cameras before one of the officers cut the line to his home safety system.
The goofy rapper responded in the way you should expect: goofy rapping. Using the footage he obtained from the botched raid, Afroman make joyful ear worms about an officer looking very hard at a slice of lemon pound cake, along with Venmo requests to cover the property damage.
Oh. He also called one of the officers a lesbian and another officer a son of a bitch:
Not the kindest words to hear, but nowhere near as bad as guns being drawn on you and your children in your own home for no good reason.
Three years of legal back and forth culminated in a trial where the officers asked the jury to make Afroman pay out ~$4M to cover the cost of their hurt feefees. And thank God — the jury didn’t give them a damned thing.
While Afroman displayed heroic levels of restraint in the courtroom, he started celebrating as soon as he stepped outside. AP News has coverage:
The Grammy-nominated rapper Afroman won a defamation lawsuit filed by seven Ohio sheriff’s deputies who sued him over music videos in which he used home security footage to mock their raid of his home.
“We did it, America! Yeah, we did it! Freedom of speech! Right on! Right on!” the 51-year-old rapper, born Joseph Foreman, shouted outside the courthouse after the Wednesday evening verdict.
Here are the sounds of victory:
And while the biggest win is for freedom of speech, the second biggest win has to be for comedy:
An officer bumbling through answering if Afroman had sex with his wife takes the cake, but the actual cake-centered questioning isn’t too far behind:
Once you look past the obvious mockery that wasn’t supposed to be mistaken for statements of fact because rap lyrics should not be taken as serious evidence, you have to respect how much of Afroman’s insults appear to be true:
Happy for you, Afroman! Hopefully all of the publicity from these dumbasses will bump up the viewer count of your music videos mocking them. Gotta pay for that property damage somehow! And if any of you fans take it upon yourselves to make fun of the department, make sure you direct it to the right one:
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn’t hurt either. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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