Good Law

From an actual case, U.S. v. Murphy, 406 F.3d 857 (7th Cir. 2005).

TERENCE T. EVANS, Circuit Judge.

We begin with the facts. Pamela Hayden agreed to become an informant for local law enforcement after being arrested on drug charges. In December of 2002, she made two controlled purchases of crack cocaine from Darron Murphy, Jr., which led to his arrest.
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 hoe" [FN1]...

FN1. 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."