Young Thug RICO trial includes jurors caught on camera, 'Truly humble under God' thug definition
The trial in Atlanta, Georgia, is closely watched in the hip-hop world. Now a screenshot that shows the faces of a few jurors is circulating on gossip blogs.
Rap superstar Young Thug is on trial for racketeering in Fulton County, Georgia, and I’ve spent the last three days watching online.
It’s a big case in the hip-hop world, but it also previews what we could see if Donald Trump goes to trial in Georgia because he’s charged under the same racketeering statute in the same county.
So far, Thug’s trial has been a total train wreck.
Fulton County Chef Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love revealed a stunning lack of understanding (or at the very least, acceptance) of the 5th Amendment (and the wrongness of double negatives) when she told the jury in her opening statement, “What you will not hear any evidence of is that the defendants were not involved in a criminal street gang.”
Then defense attorneys called for a mistrial over demonstrative slides they said contained erroneous information as well as information that had been barred from trial. Love of course objected to a mistrial, but she told the judge he could read jurors a curative instruction telling them that what they hear in opening statements is not evidence.
Not even 30 minutes into your opening and the jury needs a curative instruction? Ouch.
Judge Ural Glanville interrupted Love to sort everything out, and she didn’t resume her opening until quite a while later. That’s when we heard about the 2015 shooting of rapper Lil Wayne’s tour bus. The shooting is old news — there have been criminal charges and lawsuits — but it found a new purpose in the RICO case as one of 191 overt acts that prosecutors say are part of a racketeering conspiracy.
As Love indicated, Lil Wayne himself could be called to the stand. I am doubtful he actually will, but he’s on the witness list, and Love’s opening definitely left the door open for him.
The scene in Glanville’s courtroom at the Justice Center Tower in downtown Atlanta is playing out live on the Internet, where hundreds of thousands of people are watching streams on YouTube and through Atlanta TV news stations.
I’ve had a string of TV appearances discussing the trial, including live Monday night appearances on Scripps News and LiveNOW from Fox.
Legal name Jeffery Lamar Williams, Thug is a huge star, described by The New York Times “as one of the most famous and influential rappers of his time.” He was indicted in May 2022 alongside 27 others, many of whom have taken plea deals or had their cases severed.
A final superseding indictment in August 2022 charges Thug with eight crimes, including violating Georgia’s state RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute, participation in a criminal street gang, possession of a machine gun, drugs charges for marijuana, cocaine and codeine and possession of a firearm during a felony.
Five others are on trial with Thug, all accused of being members of a criminal street gang that prosecutors say fronts as Thug’s record label YSL. The defense says YSL stands for Young Stoner Life; prosecutors say it stands for Young Slime Life. The case includes murder charges for the killing of Donovan Thomas in January 2015 and the killing of Shymel Drinks in March 2022. Prosecutors are relying heavily on Thug’s song lyrics to connect him to the crimes.
Six defendants means six sets of defense attorneys and, potentially, six opening statements. Instead, we got five, as Bruce Harvey, the ponytailed attorney for Quamarvious Nichols, waived his opening. Harvey apparently plans to give his opening after the prosecution rests its case, which could be several months from now.
(Speaking of Harvey, a 1995 profile says, “Bruce Harvey is Atlanta’s preeminent long-haired, left-handed, anti-establishment liberal lawyer. He’s defended a long list of high-profile nasties, and it’s a dead heat as to what he’s known best for: his legal acumen or the ponytail.”)
First up for the defense was Maxwell Schardt, an Atlanta criminal defense attorney who claimed the Twitter handle NotGuiltyATL 13 years ago. He represents Shannon Stillwell, who’s charged with eight counts, including RICO and two counts of murder for Thomas’ and Drinks’ killings.
“We plead absolutely not guilty with our back straights and our eyes wide open,” Schardt told the jury on Monday. (That’s too long for a Twitter handle.)
Thug’s lawyer Brian Steel was first up Tuesday morning, and he brought the goods. Steel is an experienced trial lawyer who took a dramatically slow tone with his opening while passionately describing “Jeffery” as a musical genius who is the vicim of a wrongful prosecution based on unfair interpretations of his art and upbringing.
“Jeffery would listen to beat after beat after beat. These are billions of musical chords that he would listen to. He tried and he forced himself to speak fast within the beat and rhyme words,” Steel said.
My favorite moment was when Steel told the jury that Thug means “Truly humble under God.”
Here’s the clip:
Here’s the tweet:
It took the Internet by storm, as these messages from my friends make clear:
Steel also drew attention when he told jurors that Thug’s 2022 song “Pushin P” with Gunna, his former co-defendant who pleaded guilty last year, means “pushing positivity.”
“It means any circumstance you’re in, if you think positively about something, you can make it work. You’re pushing positivity. You’re pushing P,” Steel said.
Steel was tying to explain away overt act 156 of the RICO conspiracy charge: A hand sign Thug made in an Instagram video that prosecutors say is a Blood gang sign. It’s a P, not a B, that Thug is flashing, Steel said.
Steel also pushed back against Love’s statement that prosecutors found the lyrics while investigating the murders, saying prosecutors instead were hellbent on building a case based on the lyrics.
He also tried to distance Thug from the Lil Wayne tour bus shooting, saying a video of Thug with the guns challenging Wayne was all Thug’s manager’s idea.
“You will learn that this is part of being involved in hip hop and rap. There’s all these battles going across social media. It generates interest, much like the NFL has rivalries with the Saints and Falcons,” Steel said.
He also made clear he’s not pro cocaine, but he knows a minuscule amount when he sees it.
Steel also said Thug and his friends are “studio gangsters.”
“They’re in the studio. They are creating music for us to listen to,” he said.
Steel was followed by D’Angela Williams, whose six-minute opening was legally shaky and also kind of a protest against the system in general.
“The only time the state cares about poor people is when they can exploit them,” she said.
Williams unsuccessfully tried to withdraw from the case in April, citing the meager $15,000 she’s being paid for the case through her public defender appointment. (That’s probably about how much Steel makes per trial day.) Leaders of the public defense organization then tried to get her off the case and revealed a text she’d sent where she said she didn’t actually want off the case and only filed the withdrawal motion to try to get more money.
Williams represents 19-year-old Rodalius Ryan, who already is serving life in prison for a murder he committed when he was 15. Prosecutors say the murder was done as part of his YSL membership, which supports Ryan’s sole charge of conspiracy to violate RICO.
Next up was E. Jay Abt, who represents Deamonte Kendrick aka Yak Gotti. He said prosecutors want to convict Kendrick “by who he hangs out with, the color of the clothes that he wears, the symbols that he makes with his hands, and the beautiful lyrics that he writes and sings.”
One recurring theme in Abt’s opening was that Krispy Kreme doughnuts are absolute crap.
The prosecution’s case is “a doughnut hole,” Abt said. “It’s a Krispy Kreme doughnut hole. You don’t get the glaze. You don’t get the doughnut. You just get air in the middle.”
Abt was followed by Careton Matthews Sr., who represents Marquavius Huey. He had a great delivery, but it was so late in the day that I didn’t get as many clips as I’d like. Several commenters on my YouTube live said he was the best. I understand why: I thought he struck the right tone, and he brought a lot of substance.
“That’s how they get down and that’s how they do it. … But we gonna talk about it.”
The first witness was Mark Belknap, a detective with the Atlanta Police Department. He testified as a gang expert and went over symbols, clothing and other gang indicators. In keeping with the “train wreck” theme embrace by prosecutors, D.A. Love said she was finished with her direct exam when Judge Glanville broke for lunch, but when court resumed, she got back up there and asked Belknap a lot more questions. It’s amazing how unprepared the prosecution in this trial is.
Some of Love’s questions were also exceedingly awkward. Like this sequence:
Love: “As it relates to musical artists’ words, is there any crime in saying words?”
Belknap: “Um there is certainly potentially crimes in spoken words.”
Love: “Now, I’m not talking about crimes being described in words. I’m talking about is there a crime to speak the words.”
“As a generality no…” Objection.
Then came the afternoon drama: People on social media were posting screenshots of four jurors’ faces that were accidentally shown on the live stream when the camera was panning to the witness stand. And of course, sites like No Jumper fanned the flames.
Judge Glanville took an unexpectedly long break to discuss this in cambers with attorneys. When he returned to the bench, he cited a security issues and the inadvertent filming of jurors in the front row when politely asking the pool cameraman not to video record the remainder of Belknap’s testimony. I don’t understand why. Belknap’s photo is easily available on the Internet, including on the website for the Georgia Gang Investigators Association, of which he is on the executive board.
It took the court an honest-to-God 10 months to seat this jury, so there’s no way Judge Glanville is granting a mistrial. But we may not have heard the last of this juror identification issue. It’s still too early to know if jurors are going to be identified and harassed. There are six alternate jurors available to rotate in. Still, losing four jurors this early would not be a good thing.
But again, after taking 10 months to seat the jury, I don’t see Judge Glanville ever granting a mistrial no matter how bad this gets.
I discussed the trial live on CBS Chicago Wednesday morning.
I also got into Wednesday’s details on LiveNOW from Fox in a marathon 22-minute discussion with Carel Lajara.
I am enjoying hosting live streams of the trial on my YouTube channel, with occasional commentary and analysis from me. I’m trying to get reporters who are at the courthouse in Atlanta to join me during the breaks. On Wednesday, Jewel Wicker, whose covered the case since its inception, joined me and we had a great 38-minute discussion that you can watch here.
I’ll be streaming tomorrow morning. It’s Atlanta time, so if you’re on the West Coast, wake up early with me and be ready for testimony by 7 a.m. PT, maybe earlier.
I’ll be back covering Los Angeles-based cases soon. I’m sorry to say my cat, Claire, died on Monday night, which has made my life more difficult. She was an old girl who had a good life, but losing a pet is always sad, and she was a really good cat. She just got mentioned in my Washington Post profile as “an elderly ginger cat with all the verve of a doormat.”
If you’d like to donate to her vet bill or to my work in her name, please know that she was always a big supporter of me and my work and would appreciate the gesture. Thank you.
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Really sorry to hear about Claire <3