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Slick Rick faces deportation
British-born hip-hop pioneer's legal troubles date back to his 1991 conviction for attempted murder.
The legal entanglement that Slick Rick has found himself in since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks got a bit more jumbled late last month, and now the hip-hop pioneer is once again facing deportation.
Slick Rick
The Ruler, who was born in Britain but moved to the US as a youth in 1976, could be deported after the 2nd Circuit Appeals Court in New York overturned a 2003 ruling that freed the rapper from prison and allowed him to remain a US resident.
The complex legal saga stems from Slick Rick's 1991 conviction for attempted murder after he shot his cousin and a bystander over claims that his cousin was extorting money from him. Rick--real name Richard Walters--served five years in prison for the crime.
After the September 11 attacks, the US government began to crack down on noncitizen US residents, particularly those who have felony convictions, citing a 1996 law that called for deportation of such people. Rick, 41, fell into that category, and although he stayed under the government's radar save for a 1997 immigration violation, a 2002 performance on a Caribbean cruise ship in international waters proved to be his downfall.
The then-fledgling US Department of Homeland Security charged Rick with voluntarily "deporting himself" and then reentering the country illegally. That charge landed the rapper in an INS detention center in Florida for 17 months. He was released in October 2003.
The deportation portion of the case has since become a jurisdictional battle between the 2nd Circuit in New York, where Rick has lived since arriving in the US, and the 11th Circuit, where he was arrested and detained in 2003. Judge Kimba Wood, who gained a bit of notoriety in 1993 when she became President Bill Clinton's second unsuccessful nominee for attorney general after she was found to have hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny, initially ruled in favor of Rick, saying that his 1997 deportation denied him to due process.
But the 2nd Circuit Appeals Court in New York ruled that the case should be heard in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Miami. A ruling in the government's favor in that case, which has not yet been scheduled, would force Rick to leave the country.
Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network have scheduled a press conference in New York City on October 24th to raise awareness of the situation and show support for Slick Rick.
"With all of the real and present threats to American society from terrorism, why is the government chasing this rapper? It's an obscene misuse of scarce resources," Chavis said in a statement. "The government is conducting a vendetta against Rick, and we're not going to stand for it."
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