Rapper Young Thug pleads guilty in Atlanta YSL Records case

But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker rejected the offer. She sentenced the rapper to 40 years with five years of imprisonment. Whitaker also commuted the sentence to time served and 15 years of probation, allowing the rapper to be released from custody.

Whitaker’s leniency came with several conditions, including ordering Young Thug to stay away from metro Atlanta for the next 10 years, with some rare exceptions, including emergency medical care for family members and funerals, and attending concerts that warn about the dangers of gang involvement.

Young Thug told the judge he takes “full responsibility” for his crimes and apologized to his family and friends.

“I’m a good guy and I have a really good heart,” he said. “I found myself in a lot of things because I was just nice or cool, you know, and I realize that you can’t be like that when you get to a certain height because it can end badly.”

“I hope you’ll let me go home and do the right thing,” he told the judge.

Whitaker responded with a lenient sentence, but also issued a stern warning to Young Thug, urging him to use his music to set a better example for his fans, including children.

“I know you’re talented and if you decide to keep rapping, you need to try to use your influence to let kids know that… there are ways out of poverty other than hooking up with the powerful guy down the street. drug sales,” the judge said.

The rapper’s surprise plea brought an abrupt end to the dramatic trial, which had become daily viewing in much of Atlanta and beyond, with thousands of viewers streaming the proceedings online and celebrity guests in the courtroom. And it’s true, Young Thug’s decision to plead guilty was preceded by a moment of uncertainty as to whether he would continue his case.

Summoning the proceedings, Whitaker announced that she had been told that plea negotiations between Young Thug and prosecutors had reached an “impasse” and that the rapper wanted to enter an “unnegotiated plea,” meaning a judge would determine his sentence.

Sitting between his attorneys at the defense table and his family members in the courtroom watching, Young Thug looked down and did not respond to Whitaker’s request, prompting his attorneys to ask for a recess. After about 20 minutes, the rapper made it clear that he wanted to continue.

The development comes more than a week after Whitaker stopped testifying in the case after prosecutors failed to redact wording in evidence that led to a prosecution witness inadvertently telling jurors that at least one of the five alleged accomplices , who is on trial with Young Thug, was jailed. That error sparked multiple defense motions for a mistrial on Oct. 23.

But Whitaker said she would not declare an error in court with prejudice. If she did, the current trial would be over and the case could not be retried. She criticized prosecutors for their “sloppiness” but said she disagreed with defense attorneys who have repeatedly argued in recent weeks that prosecutors intentionally made mistakes to force the trial to retry their case before another jury.

When some attorneys said they would agree to a mistrial without prejudice, allowing their clients to be retried, Whitaker adjourned and later abruptly adjourned for the day without ruling.

That led to days of behind-the-scenes plea negotiations between defense teams and Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis, D-D., whose office is prosecuting the high-stakes case against the rapper and several alleged accomplices accused of being members of a murderous street gang in Atlanta, known as Young Slime Life or YSL.

Earlier this week, three of the six defendants took deals, pleading guilty to conspiracy to violate Georgia’s Ricoh Act in exchange for reduced charges. It was a partial victory for Willis, an experienced prosecutor who has faced criticism for adopting a state law in Ricoh to pursue large cases with multiple defendants.

But the rapper’s request has come at a political cost for Willis ahead of the election, where she is running for a second term as Fulton County’s chief prosecutor. She faced heavy criticism, including from supporters, for her decision to use Young Thug’s lyrics against him in an attempt to prove his role in gang activity.

At the same time, the prosecution’s repeated missteps during the trial cast an equally dismal light on the district attorney’s office and became Willis’ re-election fodder. Courtney Cramer, a Republican lawyer and former Trump White House intern who is running against Willis, made headlines last month when she promised to drop the Young Thug trial and drop charges against the rapper and his co-defendants if elected.

The legal turmoil in Young Thug’s case played out against the backdrop of drama in Willis’ other high-profile case. In August 2023, she filed charges against the former US president Donald Trump and more than a dozen of his associates, alleging that they conspired to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.

But the case is now largely frozen as Trump and others challenged a judge’s decision to allow Willis to continue to prosecute the case amid complaints that she had an inappropriate romantic relationship with the former attorney general she appointed to handle the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments on the matter in December.

Although Willis is overwhelmingly favored for re-election, she has faced lingering questions about her leadership and judgment after a controversy that engulfed an election-meddling case against Trump and his allies.

Young Thug’s case has been seen as a test of how a trial against Trump and his co-defendants might play out, with a famous defendant and a group of aggressive Atlanta criminal lawyers working in tandem.

Willis’ critics have seized on her use of Georgia’s expansive racketeering statute to handle such massive cases, describing them as a waste of taxpayer money.

The Young Thug trial was the longest criminal trial in Georgia history. The rapper pleaded guilty nearly two years after jury selection began and nearly a year later after the opening speeches in the case.

The dramatic developments come three months after Whitaker went on trial after Judge Ural Glanville, who presided over the case for more than two years, was formally removed in July amid defense complaints about a meeting he and prosecutors held with a key witness. .

The controversy led to a nearly two-month standoff of testimony and mistrial motions by the defense, which argued the proceedings were legally compromised by Glanville’s handling of the case and alleged prosecutorial misconduct.

Whitaker denied those motions and another that sought to remove the lead prosecutors in the case. She resumed proceedings on August 12, but warned prosecutors about her behavior.

The judge ordered the entire prosecution team to undergo new training on the “Brady rules,” which require the disclosure of material potentially favorable to the defense, and the “professional obligations” of being prosecutors.

Whitaker, a former Fulton County prosecutor, said she plans to create a more organized courtroom than her predecessor and speed up the process. But Whitaker’s patience was quickly tested amid ongoing disputes with lawyers over disclosure of evidence and other issues.

On September 30, Whitaker admonished lead prosecutor Adriana Love, questioning whether she had deliberately misled the court by misrepresenting how she planned to use evidence that lawyers had objected to.

“It’s amazing to me that someone with the years of experience that you have, time after time, continues to seemingly purposefully hide the ball as much as possible, for as long as possible,” Whitaker said angrily. love

“And I really don’t want to believe it’s intentional, but honestly, after a certain amount of times you start to wonder how it could have been anything other than that, unless you’re so disorganized that you throw the thing together when you do it will try.”

Even as his client pleaded guilty in the case, Brian Steele, Young Thug’s attorney, spent more than half an hour Friday attacking prosecutors. He accused them of distorting and concealing evidence, as well as violating rules requiring disclosure of evidence to defendants.

“They falsely accused Mr. Williams,” Steele said, noting that his client has been in prison since May 2022. “It’s just wrong to do this thing with someone without obligation and hold them hostage… Last year was full of untruths. , and (the prosecutor’s office) knows it.”

In May 2022, Young Thug and 27 associates were indicted as part of a sweeping grand jury indictment that alleged the rapper and his co-defendants were members of an Atlanta street gang responsible for a citywide spate of violence more than a decade ago . .

The original 56-count indictment charged Young Thug with just two counts: participating in street gang criminal activity and conspiracy to violate Georgia’s anti-racketeering law as the alleged leader of YSL. In August 2022, he was indicted on six additional drug and weapons charges, including illegal possession of an assault rifle.

The rapper went on trial with five others after most of the defendants entered plea deals or had their cases separated. But even with the simplified list of defendants, the case progressed at a glacial pace: jury selection dragged on for 10 months, many weeks of breaks in testimony and other delays.

Despite Whitaker’s pleas to “streamline” their case, the prosecution was barely halfway there due to their list of over 200 witnesses when the trial was abruptly halted. Two of Young Thug’s co-defendants have so far rejected plea offers. At this time, it was not clear how the case would be handled for them.

As Whitaker signed the sentence that served Young Thug’s sentence, prosecutors looked visibly stunned — though Love acknowledged that the state had offered the rapper a similar deal, but one that required him to admit to being the leader of the gang, which Steele said his the client refused to do.

The judge repeatedly warned Young Thug to avoid associating with gang members and other co-defendants in the case, although she did allow Young Thug to communicate with Sergio Kitchens, also known as rapper Gunna. Protégé Young Thug was also charged in the case, but was released after pleading guilty to an Alford charge.

Whitaker repeatedly warned Young Thug to behave.

“It is better that there are no violations, but if there are, you will come to me,” she said.