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United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________
Nos. 04-2032, 04-2293 & 04-2309
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant,
v.
DARRON J. MURPHY, SR.,
Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee,
and
JENNIFER BAKER,
Defendant, Cross-Appellee.
____________
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Illinois.
No. 03 CR 30137—G. Patrick Murphy, Chief Judge.
____________
ARGUED JANUARY 13, 2005—DECIDED MAY 4, 2005

[snip]

On the evening of May 29, 2003, Hayden was smoking crack with three other folks at a trailer park home on Chain of Rocks Road in Granite City, Illinois. Murphy, Sr., who had sold drugs to Hayden several years earlier, showed up later that night. He was friendly at first, but he soon called Hayden a “snitch bitch ho”¹ and hit her in the head with the back of his hand….

[snip]

¹ The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch “hoe.” A “hoe,” of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden’s response. We have taken the liberty of changing “hoe” to “ho,” a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps “You doin’ ho activities with ho tendencies.”