Rapper Young Thug leaves jail on 15 years probation after rejecting gang plea deal
The six-time Grammy winner pleaded no contest to racketeering and gang leadership charges as prosecutors recommended 25 years in prison, which the judge rejected.
Rapper Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams was released from jail on 15 years probation Thursday after pleading guilty in his criminal gang racketeering trial while still denying key allegations.
Prosecutors in Atlanta, Georgia, recommended the six-time Grammy winner spend 25 years in prison. They nearly reached a plea deal that would have released him on 15 years probation with a string of anti-gang requirements, but Williams and his lawyers didn’t agree with all probation conditions.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker said Thursday the plea deal offer indicates they aren’t “particularly worried that Mr. Williams if on the streets would be a danger to society,” so she imposed a sentence that allowed him to leave custody immediately on 15 years probation. He was released from custody later on Thursday.
Williams, 33, will go to prison for 20 years if he can’t complete probation, which requires him to submit to random drug tests and searches of himself, home and car, including for “criminal street gang paraphernalia.”
He also can’t possess firearms now that he’s a convicted felon, and he can’t be in the metro Atlanta area for the first 10 years of his probation, except for family weddings, funerals, graduations and medical emergencies. Whitaker also ordered him to visit the city four times a year to make an anti-gun and anti-violence presentation “at a grade school, a middle school, a boys or girls club, anything like that.” The presentations can include a benefit concert, and they’ll count toward the 100 hours of community service he’s required to perform.
Williams told Whitaker he takes “full responsibility for, you know, my crimes or my charges.” He apologized to his family, including his mother and managers, who were in the courtroom.
“Everybody that got something to do this situation, I want to say sorry for just, like, you know, being having so much time invested into this,” he said.
Williams called himself “a smart guy” and “a good guy.”
“I really got a good heart, you know. I find myself in a lot of stuff because, because I was just nice or cool, you know, and I understand that you can’t be that way when you reach a certain height, because it could end bad,” he said. “And it don’t really have to have nothing to do with you, but it could end bad, and it could, you know, fall on you.”
He told Judge Whitaker he understands how his lyrics, some of which were evidence in trial, “could be twisted.”
“I understand what it could do to the minds of people. I understand all that. And I’m, I promise you, I’m 100 percent changing that, you know?” Williams said, adding that he has “more things to rap about” now that he’s older.
He promised Whitaker, “I won’t ever be in this type of situation again.”
“I’m going away. I’ve learned from my mistakes, you know. I come from nothing, and I've made something and I didn't take full advantage of it. I’m sorry,” he said.
He told the judge she’s “really truly the best thing that ever happened to me” because she “made things fair.” Whitaker took over the case in July after Judge Ural Glanville was recused.
“I just hope that you find it in your heart to allow me to go home and be with my family and just do do better as a person,” he continued. “I know what I bring to the table. I know what I am. I know the heights I’ve reached. I know the impact I got on people, period, in the community.”
The judge told Williams she appreciates “that you do realize how much of an impact you have on people.”
“It’s past your neighborhood. It’s worldwide, especially young people,” Whitaker said. “And having come up from where you came up from and living in and around that, you know that gangs are damaging to our community.”
Whitaker said the rap industry “sounds like a modern day version of kind of WWE wrestling that used to be on television, where people would just get up and posture and act like they hated each other.”
“And it may be that that’s a lot of what is going on in the music industry, with rap. But whether it is fake or not, it has tremendous impact on kids and young people who think this is cool. This is what I want to do. Look at him. He’s a millionaire. I can do that by being, you know, a gangster in the streets,” the judge said. “And that’s not true. What you’re likely to have happen to you if you’re a gangster in the streets is you get shot, you get killed, or you get thrown in prison.”
Young Thug’s lawyer Brian Steel said he didn’t want Williams to plead guilty because he believes he’s “actually innocent” and that the jury would declare him not guilty.
He said Williams has been “trying to get people out of poverty” and out of the impoverished Cleveland Avenue neighborhood where prosecutors say the Young Slime Life gang grew from a gang called ROC (Raised on Cleveland) Crew.
“I have been with Mr. Williams, where we have gone to speak with children together, and he tells them, ‘Don’t be a rapper. Be like Brian. Be a lawyer. Keep in school,’” Steel said. “His whole being, Your Honor is trying to break the chains of poverty for others, and it has been spun in this courtroom with false statements and allegations against mister William at every turn.”
“I’m not trying to corrupt our plea. That’s his plea, and he’s entitled to it, and he wants it, and he embraces it. But to me, this is a wrongful prosecution. This is outrageous,” Steel continued.
Steel said Williams is miserable in trial and told him if there’s any chance he can go home now, he’ll take it.
“I have children that are hurting. I have things to do,” including medical issues, Steel said Williams said “He eats out of a bag, Your Honor. He eats processed food only.”
Steel said he enjoys the trial, but “it’s not that enjoyable for Mr. Williams.”
“He told me he wakes up every day and it’s another day in H-E-blank blank,” Steel said.
Steel told Whitaker that Elton John called Williams “the next coming of John Lennon.”
“Mr. Williams is unbelievable talent. He’s not just a rap artist,” Steel said.
Whitaker said Lennon “might have rapped, too, in this day and age.”
“I don’t know. But I know you’re talented, and even if you choose to continue to rap, you need to try to use your influence to let kids know that that is not the way to go and that there are ways out of poverty besides hooking up with the powerful guy at the end of the street selling drugs,” Whitaker said.
Williams’ probation prohibits him from contacting gang members and other defendants named in the 65-count indictment. That incudes rapper Sergio “Gunna” Kitchens, who has performed with Williams and recorded songs with him, but Whitaker provided an exception “as absolutely necessary to conduct the lawful business of your musical career.”
He’s also prohibited from promoting “any criminal street gang or any criminal street gang activity, including on any social media platform,” Whitaker said, and he can’t “utilize any hand signs, terminology or language that promotes any criminal street gang.” She didn’t specify which signs, but gang investigators testified in trial that Williams’ Young Slime Life gang members symbolize the gang by wiping their noses and through terms such as SLATT, or Slime Love All The Time.
Over the objection of prosecutors, Whitaker on Thursday allowed Williams to plead no contest to leading criminal street gang activity and conspiracy to violate Georgia’s anti-racketeering law. She said she only did so because he pleaded guilty to a gang crime. He also pleaded guilty to three counts of violating Georgia’s controlled substances act, one count of possession of a firearm during a felony and one count of possession of a machine gun.
Williams’ total sentence is 40 years, to serve five in prison but commuted to time served, then 15 years on probation. Then 20 years are “backloaded,” Whitaker said, which means he’ll serve 20 years in prison if he doesn’t complete them.
Steel offered for Williams to serve three years on house arrest with an ankle monitor, but Whitaker didn’t require that.
No charges were dismissed. The racketeering charge accused Williams of a criminal conspiracy that includes the 2015 murder of rival gang leader Donovan Thomas Jr. and the 2022 murder of Shymel Drinks, though he was not charged with murder. Thomas’ mother was in court on Thursday to give a victim-impact statement, but Whitaker didn’t allow it because Williams was not charged with Thomas’ murder.
Two others take plea deals
In her comments about gangs, the judge referenced Williams’ youngest codefendant, 20-year-old Rodalius Ryan.
“You’ve seen the pictures of Mr. Ryan posing with a gun as big as he is — at 15 years old — and going out and shooting and killing another teenager. And that’s what gangs do, and that’s, unfortunately, a lot of what rap music does,” the judge said.
Ryan pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to violate Georgia state’s racketeering law and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, commuted to time already served and to be served the same time as the life sentence for murder that he’s been serving since 2022.
Marquavius Huey, 28, was sentenced to 25 years, with nine to serve in prison, 11 on probation and five suspended, after pleading guilty to eight felonies that cover the bulk of his alleged criminal conduct.
Judge Whitaker sentenced Huey and Ryan in accordance with their plea agreements. She reminded Huey he faced three life sentences if convicted of his original charges, “plus, I think, about 100 years after that.” A recommended 25-year sentence with nine prison is “frankly remarkable, and something that you should not take for granted or take lightly at all.”
“I hope that with your age and with having really been faced with the distinct possibility of spending the entirety of the rest of your life in prison, the fact that you are getting this opportunity is not going to be wasted,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker said something similar to Ryan, who’s been incarcerated since he was 15 for the fatal shooting of another 15-year-old in Atlanta, Jamari Holmes. The indictment mentions several social media posts Ryan made from an illegal phone behind bars that promoted Young Slime Life as a gang.
Whitaker said Ryan needs to be “playing the long game, and not playing the short game.”
“If you can be on the straight and narrow, then somebody your age after serving some amount of time is probably going to be considered favorably for parole,” she told him.
The guilty pleas follow 11 months of testimony and a mistrial request by defense lawyers on Oct. 23 that led an increasingly frustrated Judge Whitaker to consider declaring a mistrial that would allow prosecutors to retry the case. She said this after the current witness, rapper Wunnie “SlimeLife Shawty” Lee, read aloud “Free Qua” from the caption of a Instagram photo being entered as evidence.
Prosecutors beforehand agreed to redact “#FreeQua” from the caption, but they redacted it only on the copy displayed for jurors, not on the copy given to Lee. They’d had previous problems with testimony indicating the defendants are in jail, and Quamarvious Nichols’ lawyer Nicole Westmoreland asked Whitaker to declare a mistrial.
Whitaker wouldn’t declare one with prejudice, which would essentially end the case, but she asked defense lawyers if they wanted a mistrial that would allow a second trial. Testimony hasn’t resumed since.
The racketeering conspiracy case against Williams alleged he is responsible for shooting and other violence as the leader of YSL, and that he helped finance his associates’ crimes, including by paying rent at an Atlanta home where some were living when police raided it and found evidence of drug sales.
The factual acknowledgment behind Huey’s guilty pleas says the conspiracy included murder, aggravated assault and drug sales, and it describes gunpoint robberies in October 2020 that led police to search Huey’s home and find items stolen from music producer Chandler “Turbo” Durham during a robbery eight months earlier.
Police also saw text messages in which Williams told Huey, “take that shit back, if he doesn’t take it back, he’s going to die,” and other messages in which they discussed the location of rapper Rayshawn “YFN Lucci” Bennett, who was aligned with Thomas’ Inglewood Family Bloods gang.
Huey also admitted to possessing a shank and an illegal phone inside the Fulton County Jail on Feb. 18, 2022.
“Based on what we know from other evidence that we have, that cell phone was used to communicate with other YSL members,” Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Simone Hylton said on Wednesday.
Ryan’s lawyer Leah Abbasi told Whitaker they “categorically and adamantly deny that YSL is the criminal, dangerous street gang which it’s been made out to be through this trial.”
When Holmes was murdered, Ryan “was out at all different hours, doing all different things, which I don’t think anyone would want their 15 year old to be out doing,” said Abbasi.
“He did adopt the people who were around him, the people who could support him, the people in his neighborhood who group themselves, calling themselves YSL,” Abbasi said. “Mr. Ryan at no point was trying to advance a criminal street gang and their interest. He was trying to protect himself.”
Jurors last week saw social media photos and videos of Ryan, including the one of him holding the assault rifle Whitaker referenced, and they heard testimony about Holmes’ murder.
Abbasi said on Wednesday that Ryan “doesn’t want to ever be back in a courtroom ever again.”
“I think Mr. Ryan has grown up a lot during this trial. He doesn’t want to sit through this anymore,” she said, adding that he was 11 years old at the time of some of the crimes being discussed.
Huey’s lawyer Careton Matthews Sr. said they “emphatically and categorically deny” some of the factual acknowledgements behind his plea, but they recognize there are enough to support “each and every count” to which Huey pleaded guilty.
Matthews said the agreement “is sufficient to recognize the seriousness of the charges that are before the court, and we believe it’s one that will cause Mr. Huey to be able to see the light of day in a reasonable period of time.”
Matthews told Whitaker that Huey “has seen a lot of things in his short 28-year life,” including the murder of his father 15 years ago.
“There have been times when Mr. Huey and his mother and his family have been homeless and have lived out of a car. So he’s had a very, very, very, very hard life as it relates to his upbringing,” Matthews said.
Huey has a five-year-old son as well as a baby daughter he’d never seen in person until Wednesday in the courtroom.
Matthews also indicated Huey recognizes he didn’t choose a healthy lifestyle: He told Whitaker that upon release, Huey wants to help children avoid the choices he made after his father died and “things began to take a turn for Mr. Huey.”
Huey wants to tell young Black boys, “‘Don’t do what I did, and you have another way in which you can go,” Matthews said. Matthews connected Huey with the outreach group Young Generation Movement in Atlanta, and a representative attended Wednesday’s hearing.
Huey also plans to earn his commercial driver’s license “so that he can take care of his young children that he has helped to bring into this world.”
Matthews’ co-counsel, his son Careton Matthews Jr., said Huey “has learned, grown and became a better man during this trial.”
“I’m confident in him that he can be a working-class citizen in society when he is released,” Matthews Jr. said.
Huey told Judge Whitaker he wanted “to thank the court, and thank God.”
“I want to apologize to my kids, my family, and everybody who supported me in this stressful process,” Huey said. “I plan to do my time, come back, be a better man.”
Shannon Stillwell and Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, the only two trial defendants who remain, each are charged with murder. Kendrick is charged with Thomas’ murder, while Stillwell is charged with both Drinks’ and Thomas’ murders.
Nichols, 29, was charged with Drinks’ murder, but prosecutors dropped the charge as part of his plea deal on Tuesday. Judge Whitaker sentenced him to 20 years, with seven to serve in prison and 13 on probation.
After Young Thug was sentenced on Thursday, Fulton County Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love said prosecutors offered Stillwell a recommended 60-year sentence, with 40 to serve in prison. Both his murder charges would be reduced to voluntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors want Kendrick to plead guilty to rackteering conspiracy and voluntary manslaughter, and they’ll recommend a 20-year sentence with 15 to serve in prison.
If they don’t accept the offers, the trial is to resume on Monday at 9 a.m. E.T.
You can find full video coverage of the trial and plea hearings on my YouTube channel and TikTok page.
I discussed Williams’ plea on LiveNOW From Fox:
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