Before he turned to the criminal life, Vonte Skinner was an aspiring rapper. His younger brother Amar Dean remembers him having stacks of notebooks full of lyrics, poems and artwork.
“He draws. He writes music, writes poetry,” said Dean. “He’s really good with his hands, his emotions come out through his pencil.”
But those notebooks would play a prominent role in incriminating Skinner years later.
By 2005, Skinner had become a small-time drug dealer in central New Jersey. He was charged with attempted murder for the shooting of a fellow dealer named Lamont Peterson. While Skinner admitted to police he was present the night Peterson was shot (he says he was there to buy drugs from him), he claims he didn’t pull the trigger and doesn’t know who did.
The case against Skinner hinged primarily on two eyewitnesses who claimed he was the shooter, though their stories had changed several times. Near the end of the trial, the prosecution had a police officer on the stand read thirteen pages of Skinner’s rap lyrics to the jury. The lyrics had been discovered in notebooks in the car Skinner was driving at the time of his arrest.
The lyrics don’t mention anything about the actual crime or the victims. In fact, they were largely written months and years before the shooting. The prosecution introduced them at trial to demonstrate Skinner’s motive and intent to commit violent acts.
And violent, the lyrics are. They graphically depict a world of murder, thugs and gang life:
Two to your helmet and four slugs drillin’ your cheek
to blow your face off and leave your brain caved in the street…
