Photo Credit: Eva Rinaldi / CC by 2.0
Kim Kardashian West has teamed up with Monica and vowed to free C-Murder, a New Orleans-born rapper who was sentenced to life in prison for allegedly murdering a 16-year-old fan.
The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star announced her intention to pursue “true justice” for the shooting victim and C-Murder, whose full name is Corey Miller, in a series of recently published tweets. Additionally, Kardashian West has joined forces with “Why I Love You So Much” singer Monica and lawyers with #cut50, a non-profit organization that aims to reduce America’s worldwide-high incarceration rate, to spearhead the initiative.
For background, police arrested C-Murder in the early hours of the morning on the day following 16-year-old Steve Thomas’s 2002 death from a gunshot wound. Miller – who was out on bail at the time – was booked for causing a disturbance at the House of Blues New Orleans, though the fatal episode involving Thomas took place at a nightclub the previous evening. Witnesses eventually indicated that C-Murder had argued with Thomas – who used a fake ID to enter the nightclub – before allegedly drawing a pistol and firing a single shot into the victim’s chest. Thomas was transported to and pronounced dead at a local hospital.
During the trial, Thomas’s father characterized his late son as a C-Murder fan, and multiple witnesses testified that they saw the rapper shoot the individual. Though initially deadlocked, the jury returned a 10-2 guilty verdict three hours after Judge Hans Liljeberg prompted them to try and resolve the underlying disagreements. Believing that the switch may have resulted from his instructions (as opposed to a genuine change of heart), Judge Liljeberg instructed the jury to further deliberate, though they ultimately returned the same 10-2 verdict. Kim Kardashian West noted that “if his trial was today, the jury would have had to be unanimous for him to be convicted.”
Moreover, C-Murder has long maintained his innocence, two witnesses recanted their testimonies, and Monica mentioned “dna not matching” in explaining why she believes that C-Murder didn’t commit the crime. Some have suggested that the late Soulja Slim, a New Orleans-based rapper who was shot and killed in 2003, was Thomas’s true murderer.
On the other side of the coin, C-Murder’s stage name certainly didn’t do him any favors throughout the trial, nor did an earlier attempted murder allegation (separate from Thomas’ shooting). C-Murder pled no contest to the earlier charge, and footage of the incident – showing the rapper shooting at an individual before his automatic pistol (thankfully) jammed as he appeared to try and fire additional shots yet – made its way onto the internet.
At the time of this writing, Kim Kardashian West hadn’t detailed the next steps in her effort to #FreeCoreyMiller. The 39-year-old reality TV mainstay has made headlines for her advocacy in recent years, and back in June, DMN was first to report that she’d closed a deal to bring an as-yet-unnamed criminal justice podcast exclusively to Spotify.