Bentonville Police Department booking photo of Reese Alexander Sullivan.
Police in Arkansas have arrested a 20-year-old man and self-professed rapper for what they say are terroristic threats in his music suggesting he wanted to kill and rape children, blow up churches, shoot up schools, and assassinate the U.S. president.
Reese Alexander Sullivan was arrested on Nov. 2 after police pursued a tip about him that was first submitted to the FBI this August. According to a heavily redacted probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, someone who came into contact with Sullivan’s music alerted the FBI to the disturbing find.
There were nine videos that contained the alleged threats and according to police, they included “racial statements about specific groups of people and killing them, bombing churches associated with a specific race, killing kids, raping children, bringing his gun to school and killing a specific ethnic group, shooting up his school because he was bullied, details of a plan about committing a school shooting, killing his grandmother, bombing a specific public event, killing the president and bombing the senate.”
A search warrant was executed by police on Sullivan’s Arkansas apartment on Halloween. Court records indicate Sullivan was at work when the search was underway. He was contacted, a probable cause affidavit states, and told he was not under arrest while the search was done. No bombs or other firearms were found during the search.
Bentonville police said the 20-year-old claimed the videos were meant to be “funny” and that it was part of a “character or persona” he has used since he was 17.
“Sullivan said he does not hate the groups identified in the songs, he has not sexually abused children, he has no interest in committing a shooting at his school, a bombing or killing the president and he does not possess any firearms, explosives or components,” officers reported. “Sullivan understood how the statements could alarm someone. He has not told his employer or his parents that he writes or sings these songs.”
Police said there was no history of abuse or trauma that was disclosed to them when they interviewed Sullivan.
Charged with felony terroristic threatening in the first degree, Sullivan was detained on $50,000 bond. He was released on Nov. 4 and online court records show he is slated to appear in Benton County Circuit Court on Dec. 11.
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Sullivan is represented by public defender Jay Scott Saxton. Saxton did not immediately return Law&Crime’s request for comment Tuesday.
Notably, the charges against Sullivan come a little over a year after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed The Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, a bill that restricts how prosecutors can use rap lyrics as evidence in court.
In a statement shared on social media at the time, the governor hailed the law as the first of its kind in the U.S.:
CA is the 1st state to ensure creative content – like lyrics & music videos – can’t be used against artists in court without judicial review.
Thanks, @JonesSawyerAD59 for your work & @yg @KillerMike @tydollasign @Tyga @MeekMill @E40 @TooShort for your dedication to the cause. pic.twitter.com/cpOSCiHh0X
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) September 30, 2022
USA Today reported that the law, first proposed by Democrats in California’s General Assembly, would stop “a court, in a criminal proceeding where a party seeks to admit as evidence a form of creative expression, [from considering] specified factors when balancing the probative value of that evidence against the substantial danger of undue prejudice.”
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