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NEW YORK - He’s getting a second chance to beat the rap.

A Brooklyn man convicted of helping a killer pull off a 2016 shooting will get a new trial, after a state appeals court ruled that the judge in the case wrongly allowed a dodgy “slang expert” to interpret the suspect’s rap lyrics.

Idrissa Reaves was convicted in 2019 of criminal facilitation, although the jury found him not guilty of the murder at the heart of the case.

On Wednesday, the state Appellate Division Second Department reversed that conviction, ruling that then-state Supreme Court Justice Vincent Del Giudice shouldn’t have allowed the prosecution to prop up a detective inspector as an “unqualified” expert witness capable of interpreting the lyrics in a rap song they alleged Reaves co-wrote about the killing.

Those lyrics included the line, “Boy always fu**ed up but he wanna drill a n****,” which the witness interpreted as “someone who might be impaired but wants to be involved in a shooting.”

“Under the facts and circumstances of this case, the investigator was unqualified to offer expert opinion testimony regarding the meaning of the rap lyrics,” the appeals panel wrote. “Additionally, while the investigator’s initial interpretations of the lyrics were often varied and reflected the lyrics’ inherent ambiguity, the investigator’s ultimate proffered opinions precisely and remarkably mirrored the People’s exact factual theory of the case.”

Del Giudice retired last year amid a campaign by criminal justice reform advocates to pressure Gov. Hochul not to reappoint the 22-year veteran jurist.

An analysis by the judicial transparency group Scrutinize and New York University Law School’s Center on Race, Inequality and the Law found that, over the years, appellate courts have reduced 19 of Del Giudice’s sentences for being too extreme, knocking a total of 503 years off of them.

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The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office wanted to include the rap song at trial. But Del Giudice took it a step further, wanting them to present someone who could explain the lyrics to a jury — and gave the prosecution “10 minutes” to “get somebody to be their expert,” according to the ruling.

The prosecutors picked Detective Investigator Kolawole Olosunde of the D.A. Office’s Special Investigations Unit. Olosunde had never previously been qualified as an expert in “street lingo,” though he had conducted gang investigations and was familiar with “some” of the terms used in Rikers Island phone calls in the case, according to the ruling.

Over the defense’s objections, Del Giudice qualified him as an expert.

Olosunde also interpreted some of the lyrics to mean that Henry’s killing was a hired hit — a crime Reaves wasn’t accused of at trial, the appeals panel said.

“Under the circumstances of this case, we find that the People failed to establish that their proffered expert witness was qualified to render an expert opinion as to the meaning of the rap lyrics,” the appellate judges wrote, stating that Reaves did not get a fair trial as a result.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/09/27/ ... new-trial/