The star Atlanta rapper Young Thug pleaded guilty to participating in criminal street gang activity on Thursday in a dramatic courtroom scene, bringing his starring role in the longest trial in Georgia history to an unexpected conclusion after bumpy witness testimony complicated the state’s prosecution.
Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, was matter-of-fact as he admitted to six counts, including possession of drugs and firearms. Prosecutors had described Mr. Williams in opening statements 11 months ago as “King Slime,” the fearsome leader of a pack that terrorized the streets of Atlanta via gang warfare, robbery and drug dealing for nearly a decade as his music career took off.
His guilty plea on Thursday followed a tense courtroom moment in which the judge in the case, Paige Reese Whitaker, asked Mr. Williams if he was ready to accept a non-negotiated plea, instead of a negotiated deal with prosecutors, because of an impasse over sentencing. Mr. Williams, looking stricken, conferred with his lawyers briefly before the judge called a recess to allow him to decide.
In a non-negotiated plea, the judge is responsible for deciding the sentence based on recommendations from both sides.
Upon returning, Mr. Williams, 33, said he would accept the blind plea; he also pleaded no contest to two additional counts, conspiracy to violate the RICO act, the state’s racketeering law, and leading a criminal street gang. The state said it would recommend a sentence of 45 years, with 25 served in custody, followed by 20 years on probation.
Mr. Williams’s plea came as his two remaining co-defendants indicated that they planned to continue at trial. Deamonte Kendrick, known as the rapper Yak Gotti, and Shannon Stillwell, known as SB or Shannon Jackson, stand charged with a 2015 murder, in addition to other counts, that prosecutors said kicked off a violent yearlong back-and-forth between two local factions of the national Bloods.
“Yak Gotti has rejected the state’s latest plea offer and fully intends to take this to the jury and get our not verdicts and go home,” Douglas Weinstein, a lawyer for Mr. Kendrick, said in a statement.
Three other defendants in the trial pleaded guilty this week, clearing the way for the case’s end following days of private negotiations spurred by an evidence snafu by prosecutors during witness testimony.
The original indictment, filed in May 2022, charged 28 men for their roles furthering the aims of YSL, Young Thug’s successful record label that authorities said doubled as a gang, Young Slime Life. The trial, however, began last November with six defendants after some plea deals and the severing of other defendants from the case. Jury selection for the wide-ranging case took 10 months.
The resolution of Young Thug’s involvement in the long-running blockbuster trial, which was streamed online daily for a passionate audience of fans and observers, fell short of a full victory for the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis. Her office brought the case under the same Georgia criminal racketeering law, or RICO, that she used to indict former President Donald J. Trump and others in what prosecutors call a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Williams had faced up to 120 years in prison if convicted on all charges. Another defendant in the case, Marquavius Huey, who had a murder charge against him dropped on Wednesday in exchange for pleading guilty to a single RICO count, had faced three life sentences; he agreed to serve nine years in prison minus time already served, with nine years of probation, an outcome the judge called “frankly, remarkable.”
The trial against Mr. Williams and his associates in YSL offered glimpses of what proceedings against Mr. Trump could look like, and also its potential pitfalls, with a complex web of defense motions, challenges around high-profile defendants, media coverage and the fracturing into separate trials.
The government’s case against Young Thug pitted prosecutors who said they were seeking to reduce gang violence in the city against those with concerns that the charges were fueled by yet another moral panic over rap music in America. Lawyers for the defendants fought, unsuccessfully, to prevent prosecutors from using rap lyrics as supporting evidence at trial.
“We didn’t chase the lyrics to solve the murder, we chased the murder and found the lyrics,” Adriane Love, the chief deputy district attorney for Fulton County, said during her opening statement, pointing to lines from Young Thug that her office claimed corresponded to real-world violence.
Lawyers for Mr. Williams and the others argued that YSL was simply a successful rap crew born out of poverty and struggle in violent neighborhoods that exaggerated a gangster image in its music and videos because that is what sells.
But authorities contended that even as Young Thug was becoming a platinum-selling, international pop sensation — a melodic and flamboyant innovator in Atlanta’s vibrant rap universe — he was the string-puller and chief financier of a street gang whose dominance and influence was both enhanced by and lent credibility to the rap music of its members.
Based on a 65-count indictment, with 191 separate overt acts alleged in furtherance of the conspiracy, prosecutors sought to prove that internecine beefs between YSL and Bloods sets in Atlanta had led to more than 50 violent encounters since 2015.
The case’s narrative centered on the killing that January of Donovan Thomas Jr., known as Nut, in a drive-by shooting.
Authorities said Mr. Thomas, a one-time friend and ally of YSL, had been a leader of the Inglewood Family Bloods, or IF gang, as well as a behind-the-scenes player in the careers of the Atlanta rappers Rich Homie Quan and YFN Lucci. (YFN Lucci, born Rayshawn Bennett, was charged in a 2021 RICO indictment against his YFN crew in Fulton County; in January, he pleaded guilty to a gang charge and had the rest of the counts against him, including murder, dropped.)
Although Mr. Kendrick and Mr. Stillwell, not Mr. Williams, were charged with the murder of Mr. Thomas, prosecutors attempted to prove that Mr. Williams had authorized the shooting, renting the car used and then providing safe harbor in Miami for those responsible.
Authorities said the two sides had traded retaliatory shootings across Atlanta in the years that followed, including after the 2022 stabbing of Mr. Bennett in prison.
Yet the trial was plagued by complications from the start, including the jail stabbing of Mr. Stillwell and 10 months of jury selection for a case that was estimated to last between six and nine months.
Once trial began in November, the case seemed to falter because of disorganization and a stream of reluctant and obfuscating witnesses, including former defendants who had agreed to testify against YSL when they pleaded guilty before arguments began.
A battle over the testimony of one self-professed former YSL member who was not indicted as part of the case went so far off the rails that the judge who had overseen most of the trial, Ural Glanville, was forced to recuse himself after he attempted to send Mr. Williams’s lead lawyer, Brian Steel, to jail for contempt.
Judge Glanville was replaced by Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, who sought to streamline the prosecution’s remaining evidence and testimony and made no secret of her desire to end the trial expeditiously, whether by plea deals or a jury verdict.
But the trial was derailed for a final time last week during the state’s questioning of Wunnie Lee, a rapper who performs as SlimeLife Shawty.
Mr. Lee, who accepted a negotiated plea in December 2022, was asked him to read aloud an Instagram post that was submitted as evidence. But Mr. Lee’s copy of the post was not properly redacted, leading him to read aloud a hashtag — “free Qua” — that implied prejudicial information against the defendants, two of whom were nicknamed Qua.
Their lawyers requested a mistrial, arguing that the hashtag suggested to jurors that they had already spent time in jail. But Judge Whitaker called it a careless mistake by the prosecution, rather than an intentional disclosure, indicating that she would only consider a mistrial that allowed the case to be brought again.
“What I’m trying to do is fix your sloppiness so that everybody won’t have wasted 10, 12 months of their lives in this trial,” Judge Whitaker said to prosecutors at the time. The trial was halted, leading to days of private plea negotiations.
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