A Shaggy defense is phrase used by commentators to describe an event in which a person denies an accusation with the simple defense of "it wasn't me", despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The phrase is derived from reggae musician Shaggy's 2000 single "It Wasn't Me", the phrase was coined by Slate writer Josh Levin in 2008 to describe the defense tactics used by singer R. Kelly while on trial for child pornography charges.
"It Wasn't Me" by reggae musician Shaggy was released in September 2000 as the first single from his fifth album Hot Shot , eventually reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States and in other countries. [1] The lyrics of the song depict a man asking his friend what to do after his girlfriend catches him having sex with another woman. His friend's advice is to deny everything, despite clear evidence to the contrary, with the phrase "It wasn't me".
On February 3, 2002, a video surfaced showing popular R&B musician R. Kelly raping and urinating on an underage girl. The story, was sent to the Chicago Sun-Times , on February 8, 2002. [2] This news surfaced on the day Kelly was to perform at the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics. In interviews with WMAQ television of Chicago and MTV News, Kelly said that he was not the man in the video. [3] [4] In June 2002, Kelly was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography and arrested. [5]
The case earned media attention, and Kelly's insistence that he was not the man in the video as his only line of defense earned mockery. When the case went to trial in 2007, Kelly based his defense on denying that it was him in the video, which led Slate writer Josh Levin to coin the term the "Shaggy defense" in reference to the song to describe Kelly's strategy: "I predict that in the decades to come, law schools will teach this as the 'Shaggy defense'. You allege that I was caught on camera, butt naked, banging on the log cabin floor? It wasn't me." [6] Levin repeated the term on NPR. [7] Ultimately, Kelly was found not guilty on those charges. [8]
According to Josh Levin of Slate, "As Kelly's lawyers mentioned multiple times, the alleged victim in this case – now a 23-year-old woman – told a grand jury that it wasn't her. While 15 friends and relatives testified that the girl in question was indeed on the video, neither the alleged victim nor her parents showed up in court to testify for either side." [9] The prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen was easily impeached as a witness due to her clearly sordid history with R. Kelly, others, and even soliciting a bribe from an investigator in the case. One juror told the Chicago Tribune, "At some point we said there was a lack of evidence." [8]
In the 2010 Virginia court case Preston v. Morton, in which an allegation against a driver accused of striking a man with a tractor trailer while he was installing traffic lights was refuted by the defendant claiming that he was not the one driving the truck in question, U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser specifically cited the alleged driver as using the Shaggy defense in his written judgement. [10] Writing about the case, Josh Levin noted the endurance of the term he coined: "The Shaggy defense, like the jury system and the principle of habeas corpus, is one of the pillars underpinning American jurisprudence." [10]
Additionally in 2010, Chris Hayes accused BP of using the Shaggy defense over their refusal to accept responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. [11]
In 2013, The Atlantic accused the United States Department of Justice of using the Shaggy defense in regards to their refusal to respond to a lawsuit filed against them by the American Civil Liberties Union over the CIA's use of unmanned drones in warfare by claiming that the program was a state secret, even though it had been acknowledged and even defended multiple times by the Obama administration. [12]
In February 2019, Virginia governor Ralph Northam was accused of using the Shaggy defense after photographs from his medical school yearbook page surfaced showing a man in blackface next to a man wearing Ku Klux Klan robes. [13] When the story first came out, Northam stated that he apologized for being in the image. However, a day later, Northam changed his story, claiming that it was not him. [14] Multiple commentators, including CNN political analyst April Ryan and Michael Eric Dyson, cited the song in their remarks on his conflicting explanations. [15] [16]
Robert Sylvester Kelly is an American former singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is credited with prolific commercial success in R&B, hip hop, and pop music recordings, earning nicknames such as "the King of R&B", "the King of Pop-Soul", and "the Pied Piper of R&B". Kelly's career ended in 2019 following his arrest and subsequent convictions on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges involving sexual abuse of minors.
Jive Records was a British-American independent record label founded by Clive Calder in 1981 as a subsidiary of the Zomba Group. In the US, the label had offices in New York City and Chicago. Jive was best known for its successes with hip hop, R&B, and dance acts in the 1980s and 1990s, along with teen pop and boy bands during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
James Peter DeRogatis is an American music critic and co-host of Sound Opinions. DeRogatis has written articles for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Spin, Guitar World, Matter and Modern Drummer, and for 15 years was the pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Unfinished Business is the second and final collaboration album between American rapper Jay-Z and American singer R. Kelly. The album was released worldwide on October 26, 2004. It was distributed in the United States and Canada by Jive Records and Island Def Jam Music Group, by the Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and its subsidiary Jive Records, except in Canada and the United States of America where Island Def Jam Music Group and its labels Def Jam Recordings and Roc-A-Fella Records replaced BMG. The album was composed of unreleased tracks from the recording sessions of 2002's The Best of Both Worlds, although slight additions were made.
"It Wasn't Me" is the first single from Jamaican-American reggae musician Shaggy's fifth studio album, Hot Shot (2000). The song features vocals from British-Jamaican singer RikRok. The lyrics of the song depict one man asking his friend what to do after his girlfriend caught him cheating on her with "the girl next door". His friend/Shaggy's character's advice is to deny everything, despite clear evidence to the contrary, with the phrase "It wasn't me."
"Hey Sexy Lady" is a song recorded by Jamaican-American reggae artist Shaggy. It was released in November 2002 as the first single from his album Lucky Day. The song features Brian and Tony Gold and the song uses the Sexy Lady Explosion riddim with additional beats. As of August 2014, it was the 110th best-selling single of the 21st century in France, with 287,000 units sold.
Street money is an American political tactic where local party officials are given legal cash handouts by an electoral candidate's campaign in exchange for the officials' support in turning out voters on election day.
Orville Richard Burrell, better known by his stage name Shaggy, is a Jamaican-American reggae musician who scored hits with the songs "It Wasn't Me", "Boombastic", "In the Summertime", "Oh Carolina", and "Angel". He has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards, winning twice for Best Reggae Album with Boombastic in 1996 and 44/876 with Sting in 2019, and has won the Brit Award for International Male Solo Artist in 2002.
Rick John Santelli is an American editor for the CNBC Business News network. He joined CNBC as an on-air editor on June 14, 1999, reporting primarily from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. He was formerly the vice president for an institutional trading and hedge fund account for futures-related products. He is also credited as being a catalyst in the early formation of the Tea Party movement via a statement he made on February 19, 2009.
The Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan is a U.S. program announced on February 18, 2009, by U.S. President Barack Obama. According to the US Treasury Department, it is a $75 billion program to help up to nine million homeowners avoid foreclosure, which was supplemented by $200 billion in additional funding for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase and more easily refinance mortgages. It was initiated in 2009 to stabilize the U.S. economy due to the Great Recession. The plan is funded mostly by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act. It uses cost sharing and incentives to encourage lenders to reduce homeowner's monthly payments to 31 percent of their gross monthly income. Under the program, a lender is responsible for reducing total monthly mortgage payments (PITI) to no more than 38 percent of the borrower's income, with the government sharing the cost to further reduce the payment to 31 percent. The plan also involves potentially forgiving or deferring a portion of the borrower's mortgage balance. Mortgage servicers receive incentives to modify loans and to help the homeowner stay current, though participation by lenders is voluntary.
Joshua Benjamin Levin is an American writer and the national editor at Slate magazine. Levin also hosts the magazine's sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen.
The city of Chicago, Illinois held a nonpartisan mayoral election on Tuesday, February 22, 2011. Incumbent Mayor Richard Michael Daley, a member of the Democratic Party who had been in office since 1989, did not seek a seventh term as mayor. This was the first non-special election since 1947 in which an incumbent mayor of Chicago did not seek reelection.
Linda Taylor was an American woman who committed extensive welfare fraud and, after the publication of an article in the Chicago Tribune in fall 1974, became identified as the "welfare queen". Accounts of Taylor's activities were used by then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, for his 1976 presidential campaign onwards, to illustrate his criticisms of social programs in the United States. Her criminal activities are believed to have extended beyond welfare fraud and may have included assault, theft, insurance fraud, bigamy, kidnapping, and possibly even murder.
#MeToo is a social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse, sexual harassment and rape culture, in which people publicize their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment. The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke. The hashtag #MeToo was used starting in 2017 as a way to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem. "Me Too" is meant to empower those who have been sexually assaulted through empathy, solidarity and strength in numbers, by visibly demonstrating how many have experienced sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.
On January 2, 2018, 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore Blaze Bernstein was killed after leaving home to meet an acquaintance at a park in California. Authorities later charged his former high school classmate Samuel Woodward with the murder, declaring that the incident was a hate crime.
"I Admit" is a 19-minute song by American singer R. Kelly. Released on SoundCloud on July 23, 2018, the song addresses the singer's sexual abuse scandals. "I Admit" was written by Kelly and Raphael Ramos Oliveira, and produced by Kelly and Noc. The release of "I Admit" followed a 2017 BuzzFeed News investigative report that alleged that Kelly operated a "sex cult", and a 2018 boycott of Kelly backed by Time's Up. In "I Admit", Kelly makes a number of confessions, including that he is dyslexic, that he has been sexually unfaithful, and that he was raped. Kelly does not make any criminal admissions, but instead denies allegations of domestic violence and pedophilia. The lyrics rebuke Jim DeRogatis for his BuzzFeed News report, and disavow the report's allegations that Kelly is in charge of a "sex cult".
Vincent Michael Gaughan is a Cook County Circuit Court Judge in Cook County, Illinois who presided in the historic trial of Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago Police officer who murdered Laquan McDonald.
Over the course of one week in February 2019, all three of Virginia's statewide elected executive officials became engulfed in scandal, and were consequently the subjects of nationwide bipartisan calls for resignation or removal from office.
Mute R. Kelly was the name of a movement and social media campaign that sought to have American singer R. Kelly convicted of sexual abuse and end financial support for his career. Founded by Kenyette Barnes and Oronike Odeleye in 2017, the movement played a significant part in drawing renewed attention to decades-long allegations against the singer, and became especially prominent following the 2019 release of the documentary series Surviving R. Kelly.
American R&B singer R. Kelly has faced repeated accusations of sexual abuse for incidents dating from 1991 to 2018 and has been the subject of a long-term investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times since August 2000. He has been tried in multiple civil suits and criminal trials, starting in 1996 and culminating in a 2021 conviction for violations of the Mann Act and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and a 2022 conviction for production of child pornography. Defenders of Kelly maintained that he was merely a "playboy" and a "sex symbol." Judge Ann Donnelly, who presided over Kelly's 2021 trial, summarized Kelly's actions as having "[used] his fame and organization to lure young people into abusive sexual relationships—a racketeering enterprise that the government alleged spanned about 25 years."