Whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals erred in admitting racially inflammatory rap lyrics as evidence and in allowing testimonial out-of-court statements from an absent serology expert via a surrogate expert in violation of the Confrontation Clause

1. Whether the State’s use in a capital sentencing proceeding of rap lyrics composed by a Black defendant to argue to a nearly all -White jury that the Black defendant must be a violent and dangerous person because he wrote the rap lyrics , violates due process, fundamental fairness , and equal protection under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution . 2. Whether the State’s introduction of a state -employed and out -of-court expert’s serology report and findings at trial, via the testimony of another expert who testified to and relie d upon the absent expert’s out -of-court statements as a basis of the second expert’s own findings , violates the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution under Smith v. Arizona , 602 U.S. 779 (2024). (II)