A jury sided with the rapper known as Afroman on Wednesday in a civil defamation suit brought against him by seven Adams County Sheriff’s deputies who alleged they were harmed by his use of surveillance footage in music videos that mocked their 2022 raid on his home.

The verdict came after a two-day trial during which Afroman, whose given name is Joseph Foreman, invoked everything from First Amendment rights to financial necessity in defending a slew of music videos he made mocking Adams County Sheriff’s deputies’ raid on his property.

“I didn’t win, America won,” he told reporters after emerging from the courthouse. “America still has freedom of speech. It’s still for the people, by the people.”

Clad in a suit, tie and sunglasses patterned after the American flag, the Grammy-nominated “Because I Got High” singer on Tuesday testified in court. He was sued in 2023 by seven Adams County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputies over his viral vengeance in what came to be known as the Lemon Pound Cake trial. They accused him of defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress — and had been seeking millions in damages, according to WKRC-TV.

Foreman said in court they had no one to blame but themselves, and that he had the First Amendment right to use the surveillance footage from his own home. He also alleged the warrant was baseless and should have entailed more due diligence.

“All of this is their fault,” Foreman told the jury. “If they hadn’t wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit, I would not know their names, they wouldn’t be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs.”

When deputies armed with long rifles tore through Foreman’s front gate, kicked down his door and rummaged through everything from CDs to suit pockets in August 2022, the rapper was in Chicago, BET News reported at the time. He learned about it via neighbors’ phone calls.

But his wife was on hand, and she filmed the raid, while home surveillance video filled in the blanks.

One camera caught Deputy Justin Cooley momentarily mesmerized by a pound cake under glass on Foreman’s kitchen counter. That featured prominently and repeatedly in one of Foreman’s send-ups, “Lemon Pound Cake,” and Cooley was dubbed “Officer Pound Cake.” The video has been viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube, and it was played for the court during Cooley’s testimony.

“I received hundreds of pound cakes at work from different people,” Cooley testified on Monday.

For Foreman, the videos were a humorous way to recoup his dignity and earn money to repair the property damage, which the cops told him they weren’t liable for. (“Will You Help Me Repair My Door” addressed that issue.) Though the search warrant cited probable cause for narcotics and kidnapping, the officers found zero evidence of criminal activity and never filed any charges. They left behind “significant damage” and kept $400 out of the cash they seized, he alleged. The sheriff’s office called it a miscount.

Even as the trial unfolded, Afroman kept the videos coming, cavorting in the same American flag-themed suit as he sang “The Batteram Hymn of the Police Whistleblower” to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” whose chorus was, “Afroman will bring it to ya / Afroman is gonna do ya / Afroman is gonna screw ya / My proof’s on the internet.”

After Sgt. Randy Walters was grilled about whether he had ever been called a son of a b— and he replied, “not online,” Afroman promptly posted a video titled “Randy Walters Is a Son of a B—.” Likewise, when Deputy Lisa Phillips cried on the stand after another music video was played — this one full of aspersions about her — Foreman made a new song asking where her tears were when she and her colleagues were wreaking havoc in his home.

He was backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief in support of his First Amendment right to criticize public officials when it comes to matters of public concern.

The blowback has spread beyond Ohio to Adams County in Colorado, where deputies were compelled to explain in an Instagram video that they were not the Adams County that’s suing Afroman. After showing screen shots of messages excoriating them for the lawsuit they haven’t filed, Sgt. Shea Haney gave a “quick geography lesson” via a map showing the two states, with “This is Us” stamped over Colorado and “This is not us” covering Ohio and suggested, “So, before you start sending us messages, calling us, emailing us, DMing us, you may want to google it.”

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