This was an essay I wrote about the Judas Priest Trials. I haven't included all the witnesses, and such, but I only had a limited amount of time to do this. Plus most of the witnesses and other people not as relevant important to the case are indeed, minor.
Also, since for some strange reason, I can't use tabs on blogger, and yet again, showing longer direct quotes is much more difficult than using Microsoft Word.
On that note, I give you most of my reasoning, plus a brief description of the shootings and pre-trail.
Vance vs. Judas Priest: The Preposterous Court Case
`Heavy metal: the devil’s music. Its insane guitar solos, thrashing bass, charismatic drum cadences, and gripping vocal singers have been the choice music of many rebellious youngsters; ripping its way through into the 70s and kicking today’s door down. Of course the common stereotype of the unruly teenager who listens to such ungodly music has always been encouraged by the older generations of easy listeners. These older generations –including the parents of these teens- have dubbed this sinful music the cause of their troublesome children. Does this particular type of music create violent tendencies in its listeners? Do its lyrics encourage suicide and rebellious actions? My answer: absolutely not. Rock or metal music does not brainwash or urge its listeners - either by the lyrics or any other feature of the song - to do things that a sensible person would not normally do. If someone makes a rash decision, metal listener or not, their actions were caused by their problems in their life at the time of the decision and their struggles with life in that past, not by what genre of music they were listening to at the time.
“Victims of Change”
On December 23, 1985, two young men, James Vance and Raymond Belknap were listening to a few albums on the turntable, drinking, and smoking marijuana. Belknap decided to give out his Christmas present early, so that night, he presented Vance with his present. It was their favorite band’s new record, Stained Class. They listened to the record several times until they decided to make a pact. This suicide pact would influence their, and many other people’s lives after that night.
After trashing Vance’s room, they heard his parents’ voices, grabbed Vance’s shotgun, climbed out the window, and walked until they found themselves in a deserted playground. They spent a while in the park discussing how they had ruined their lives and Belknap, gun “pressed against his throat,” uttered the words, “I sure fucked up my life,” and pulled the trigger (Dream Deceivers). Vance picked up his gun, slick with the blood of his best friend, put it under his throat and fired.
The shooting killed Belknap, but Vance remained, although severely disfigured. He lived with his parents for three years and then admitted himself to the New Frontier Treatment Center, where he died a few months later of a methadone overdose on November, 29,1988. Glenn Tipton, the lead guitarist of Judas Priest, had his own theory of what happened the twenty-ninth, which coincides with my own.
(This is a direct quote)
Jay Vance was to be the star witness, as the court case got closer, it must have dawned on him that he would be on the stand, looking like he did, facing a band he’d always thought was great, and then finally, when the judge said there would be cameras in court, just prior to the case, he died of an overdose. You have to ask yourself who was really responsible for that lad’s death? (Judas Priest Suicide Trial Article, 3)
The facts are still fuzzy as to if his death was self inflicted or simply a mistake of the doctors and members of the staff at the center.
“Screaming for Vengeance”
Judas Priest, about to go on stage in Nevada, “were handed a writ [subpoena] claiming that [their] album Stained Class had been responsible for a double suicide, and [they] were being sued for $6.2 million.” (Judas Priest Suicide Trial Article, 2) They were thought to have put subliminal messages in their music to induce suicidal thoughts in the minds of their fans. The alleged phrase, “Do it,” was believed by the plaintiffs to be the cause of their sons’ deaths. “In the pre-trial motion, Justice Jerry Carr Whitehead ruled that subliminal speech does not deserve protection [by the constitution] because is does not perform any of the functions that free speech accomplishes” (Moore, 2). That said, the case went to trial, and both the plaintiffs and the defense called expert after expert to the stand.
The plaintiffs called several well-known experts to the stand to discuss the effects and dangers of subliminal messaging. One of the experts was Dr. Wilson Key, the man who “possibly undermined his own creditability with the court by opening that subliminal messages can be found on Ritz crackers..” (Moore, 3). Another was Howard Shervrin, a highly respectable researcher on subliminal messaging. He pointed out that the messages were so dangerous simply because the spectators were unaware of their presence.
The defendants called three different experts, one of which was Timothy Moore. “It was [his] opinion that there was no scientific support for the proposition that subliminal directives could induce behavior of any kind, let alone suicide” (Moore, 3) Another was Don Read, whose information concerning reversed speech was very useful to the defendants.
“Breakin’ the Law”
The fact of the whole matter is this: both men had a record for petty crime, unemployment, failure in school, and serious drug abuse. Vance fought in school, and at some point, he broke another student’s jaw. Belknap had the police come to his house when he was shooting a dart gun at the neighbors’ cat; they took the gun and he was charged a minimal penalty for animal torture. Before they dropped out of school, they both began using heavy illegal drugs. When Vance was at the New Frontier Treatment Center, he admitted to using countless different heavy drugs. (Moore, 3)
Phyllis Vance admitted in court that husband had been a serious drinker and was a heavy gambler who lost his entire paycheck on occasion. Of course she had said that these problems were only during the early years of their marriage, and that he had gone to AA for help. In the documentary Dream Deceivers, we see several of the couple’s discussions, which have aggressive defense from both sides and seem to have a deeper problem rooted to discussion turned serious argument.
Since both young men had numerous personal problems, as well as problems with their families, it’s no surprise that they may have grown tired of life and wanted to end it. After all they, both men had many of the red flag warning signs of possible suicide attempts. Anita Boberson (Ray’s mother) insists that there were none of the signs that were supposed to be there” (Dream Deceivers). That statement can’t be true because Belknap had attempted suicide once before, and tried to talk about it with his parents. What about the fact that Ray had been giving out his Christmas presents out early? Psychologists generally acknowledge this to be an extreme warning sign of suicide.
Although these facts are extremely important to this case, the judge said in his final ruling that “the deceased and their parents are not on trial. The court is not to judge the lives of the decedents or evaluate their families.” (Moore, 2) The defense couldn’t use this information to influence the jury, even though if they had, the case would have ended sooner and would have ended much more reasonably.
“Dream Deceivers”
It was one unlikely testimony by Vance’s school counselor, Mrs. Rusk that helped to point out the most obvious flaw of the trial. She said that Vance had told her, “We got a message. It told us to just do it. It [the album] was giving us the message to just do it..” (Moore, 7) Shevrin, the plaintiff’s main expert believed subliminal messages were dangerous because people where not consciously aware of them. If Vance and Belkap had heard the message “Do it” on the Stained Class album, then it was obviously not subliminal, and according to Judge Whitehead, was protected by the Constitution.
I also realized an extremely important detail during my research, and it was that the album Stained Class was recorded twelve years before the trail. If there were subliminal messages in the record, shouldn’t there have been a large amount of Judas Priest fans committing suicide in those past twelve years? This particular fact was not even mentioned in the trail, even though that single concept would have ended that six week circus of a trial.
So what was the result ruling you ask? “Judas Priest was not held responsible for the deaths of Raymond Belknap and James Vance, but the prosecution was awarded the prosecution $40,000.” (Judas Priest Suicide Trial Article, 8) Judge Whitehead believed that even though there were subliminal messages, they were not placed there intentionally. This is an extremely good example of how the justice system does things cover up the fact that they wasted a lot of taxpayers’ dollars in holding an incongruous trial for preposterous reasons.
Judas Priest obviously did not put subliminal messages in their music. They did not commit any crime. The trial was nothing more than a round-about charade, where the objective was to basically legally shift the blame of the young men’s suicides from the dysfunctional and irresponsible parents to the music they men were listening to. Blaming artistic influences on the spectator’s actions is not acceptable. If you think that you can justify this trial’s ridiculous outcome, “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming.”
Sources
Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance vs. Judas Priest. Dir. David Van Taylor. KCET, SCETV, WGBH, WNET. 1992.
"Judas Priest Suicide Trial Article." Mahou Weblog 6 Dec 2006 31 Mar 2009
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“Is Music to Blame for Society’s Ill?” Music Week (July 14, 2007): 15. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Grand Forks Public Schools Central H.S. 23, March 2009.
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Moore, Timothy. "Scientific Consensus and Expert Testimony: Lessons from the Judas Priest Trial." Skeptical Inquirer 20. November/December 1996. 27 Mar 2009. .
