If a rapper tells the world he killed someone in a song, should that be taken as a confession?

That question, and many others similar in nature, are being asked across the country. Courtrooms are filling with gangsta rappers because of the lyrics they use.

“In some of the cases, the police say the lyrics represent confessions,” writes The New York Times’ Lorne Manly. “More often, the lyrics are used to paint an unsavory picture of a defendant to help establish motive and intent. Increasingly, the act of writing the lyrics themselves is being prosecuted, not because they are viewed as corroborating an incident, but because prosecutors contend the words themselves amount to a criminal threat.”

One of the most notable cases is that of rapper Twain Gotti, whose real name is Antwain Steward.

On the song “Ride Out,” Gotti raps, “But nobody saw when I [expletive] smoked him. Roped him, sharpened up the shank, then I poked him, 357 Smith & Wesson beam scoped him.” Those lyrics helped police link Gotti to the 2007 murders of Christopher Horton and Brian Dean, a criminal case that had gone cold.

Using rap lyrics as evidence worries lots of people, especially free speech advocates. While gangsta rappers often like to present themselves as tough, sometimes murderous criminals in their songs, these personas more often are characters than confessions or reflections of real-life deeds. In one case, the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union wondered why violent rap lyrics would be thought to reflect the soul of the writer, but violent bits of literature or other forms of music do not.

“That a rap artist wrote lyrics seemingly embracing the world of violence is no more reason to ascribe to him a motive and intent to commit violent acts than to saddle Dostoyevsky with [the lead character in Crime and Punishment] Raskolnikov’s motives or to indict Johnny Cash for having ‘shot a man in Reno just to watch him die (“Folsom Prison Blues”).'” (New York Times)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and his two children. Follow him on Twitter.