Jury on Young Thug’s RICO Trial Returns After Nearly Two-Month Break

The threat of a possible mistrial loomed large over Young Thug’s gang and racketeering trial Monday as the contentious proceeding resumed in earnest with jurors returning from a nearly two-month break.

Key prosecution witness Kenneth “Woody” Copeland was due to retake the witness stand after his prior appearance in the Atlanta case in June led to a controversial secret meeting. That meeting, in turn, led to the recusal of the former judge on the case, Fulton County Chief Judge Ural Glanville.  

At a hearing without the jury last week, Copeland told the court he wasn’t sure if he would show up Monday and willingly testify under his immunity deal with prosecutors or refuse to cooperate in a move that would land him in jail on a contempt charge. “It depends on how I wake up,” he told the court Tuesday.

Depending on Copeland’s decision, jurors were set to be instructed to disregard either all or a portion of his prior testimony and any evidence related to his testimony. The new judge on the case, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, said she was planning to then ask the jurors if they felt capable of following such an instruction. The judge said she wanted to know sooner rather than later if the response from any of the jurors might be, “I just cannot do that. Once I hear it, I can’t unhear it,” because she would then have to “excuse those jurors.”

“And I guess if it’s eight jurors that say that, then we might have a mistrial, but better to go ahead and figure out from the outset as far as I’m concerned,” Judge Whitaker said, acknowledging the question could blow up the 19-month trial that started with jury selection in January 2023. Whitaker cited an appellate court case as the basis for asking the question and said that such an inquiry of the panel seemed “like a pretty good idea to me.”

The jury hearing the case has 12 members and four alternates, so it would only take five jurors saying they wouldn’t be able disregard Copeland’s testimony for a possible mistrial.

Douglas Weinstein, the lawyer for rapper Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, one of Williams’ five co-defendants in the current trial, told Rolling Stone on Friday that he believes any mistrial connected to Copeland’s testimony should end the case for good. “I’ll argue it’s a mistrial based on prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and therefore double jeopardy should attach and we should not be subject to retrial,” he said. Referring to Copeland, the lawyer said, “He’s the most colorful witness we’ve had, certainly the most memorable. How do you forget that?”

During his time on the stand, Copeland rocked back and forth, yawned dramatically and admitted he was robotically giving answers without listening to questions. His repeated “I don’t recall” reply became a meme on social media. Colorful or not, Copeland is a key witness in the case. Prosecutors describe him as an unindicted co-conspirator who was a member of the purported “Young Slime Life” gang at the center of the trial. In a series of interviews with investigators, Copeland made various and often inconsistent statements about things he allegedly heard in the aftermath of a 2015 murder listed in the indictment. Prosecutors are using portions of those statements to support their claim Kendrick and another co-defendant now on trial, Shannon Stillwell, were involved in the deadly shooting.

In their 65-count RICO indictment naming 28 defendants, prosecutors allege YSL was a Bloods-affiliated gang that terrorized Atlanta with drug sales, armed robberies, shootings and three murders. Prosecutors allege Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, co-founded and led the gang as he simultaneously rose to prominence in the music industry and won a Grammy award. Williams has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Brian Steel, has denounced the state’s RICO indictment as “unconscionable.” In filings to recuse Glanville, Steel called the judge “unethical” and the trial “broken.”

“He’s not running this criminal street gang,” Steel said of Williams during his opening statement last November. “He is not sitting there telling people to kill people. He doesn’t need their money. Jeffery is worth tens of millions of dollars.”