Anarian Chad Jackson led a Little Rock gang called the West Side Posse. Charles Raynor led a rival gang called the Monroe Street Hustlers. The two gangs fought constantly.

One day in 2001, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals noted in a decision issued Thursday, Jackson and fellow gang member Chris Bush spotted Raynor talking on a cordless phone in his front yard. Then:

"Jackson remarked, 'There go Little Chuck [Raynor], man. He out there slipping. We need to go on and get him.' Jackson instructed the driver to park behind the house, and Jackson and Bush exited the vehicle carrying a .40 caliber semiautomatic handgun and a .357 Magnum, respectively. They approached Raynor from an alley running alongside the house and began firing. One of the bullets struck Raynor in the head, killing him."

OK, so Jackson is a tough guy. But is he a slinger and a banger?

A gang intelligence expert testified that a "slinger" is a drug dealer and a "banger" is a gang member who's engaged in violent activities. Both terms, the expert testified, applied to Jackson.

Jackson objected, claiming the rhetorical characterizations were inadmissible character evidence, made without sufficient back-up evidence. It was not a trivial argument; one member of the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed.

But in its ruling Thursday, the 8th Circuit concluded the two terms were simply a summing up of what had been previously testified to; they were cumulative, and thus unlikely to have had in themselves much of an impact on the jury's decision.

The slang words certainly carry an extra punch, though, simply because they are so vivid and easy to recall. That's undeniably helpful to the prosecutors, who want to shape jurors' perceptions of the defendant. It is not the mass of evidence the mind recalls, but the quick summing up.