Jeffery Lamar Williams, 32, pecks at a tablet. He waved, tapped and barely got up as the judge walked in. joke. “Is that Schlitz?” the judge asked. “Gotta keep it warm here,” one lawyer said. Hahaha. Tap tap tap.
It’s a morning in February, the 654th day since Williams was jailed without bail for impersonating a hot record label to run a murder ring. Jury selection takes a full year; the trial may last until after the next presidential election. As a forensic biologist took the stand to explain the details of the molecular photocopier’s connection to an alleged attack in 2013, the thug crossed his arms across his 6-foot-3 frame, closed his eyes, and sank into the water. On the gallery’s hardwood bench, a piece of foam imprinted itself on the buttocks of some long-gone observers, and one lawmaker would doze off before the hearing ended.
The case has troubled the rap community and has been closely watched by legal scholars because of its high drama and high stakes. The trial made tabloid headlines for its misadventures: a porn bombing and a juror’s face being accidentally broadcast live. One of Williams’ co-defendants is accused of conducting a hand-to-hand drug deal in full view of a judge. A police officer was arrested on suspicion of smuggling contraband into jail and having an “inappropriate relationship” with another co-defendant, who has severed ties with the case.
“It’s been a wild ride,” said Jack Lerner, co-author of “The Rap Trial: A Lawyer’s Guide to the Law,” who along with countless rap fans is watching the trial and worrying about its impact on the industry. Chilling effect. “They brought such a huge [racketeering] The case was transferred to a common court in Georgia, the Fulton County Courthouse, which really wasn’t set up for a case of this magnitude.
But most days are pathologically monotonous. The rioters stared desperately at the news cameras. His lawyer said he lived in prison on a diet of chips and chocolate and little sleep. They say the government is trying to silence a generation of black artists with a case so weak that the indictment cites Thug’s own lyrics as a “public act.”[s] Promote conspiracy.
“Give the lawyer nearly two million. He’s responsible for all the killing,” Thug sang on his 2019 album So Much Fun, which is now documented in official court records. “We don’t talk about wax. This is all gang business. We know to kill the biggest cat of all kittens.
timeFulton County Superior Court is less than five miles from Cleveland Avenue, nicknamed “Blivland Avenue” because of the Bloods gangs that dominated the neighborhood, and where Williams was one of 11 children who grew up.
His childhood apartment was demolished when he was about 18. A few years later, Thug released his debut mixtape, “I Came From Nothing.”
He sounds like no one else in the macho world of Southern rap, layering childish and meaningless lyrics over hardcore trap beats. Washington Post music critic Chris Richards later described his work as the sound of “the world falling apart.”
Thug was quickly scouted by legendary Atlanta artist Gucci Mane, with whom he shared an ice cream cone face tattoo, and his career accelerated. He left Bluffland for Buckhead, an upscale area of Atlanta near a shopping mall that houses Cartier and Gucci stores. By 2019, Thug was winning a Grammy, collaborating with Elton John, and establishing himself as one of the hottest new stars in the rapidly growing rap world.
Fame and money magnified Thug’s unique style. In 2014, his manager told The Fader reporter that he “doesn’t eat real food.” Two years later, he was getting monthly vitamin injections, GQ magazine wrote. According to a reporter from Complex, he ordered everyone entering his home to wear white clothes. He appeared on the cover of his 2016 album “Jeffery” wearing an Alessandro Trincone dress. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, later displayed the dress in its “Gender-Bending Fashion” exhibition.
He’s unmistakably a Southern rapper who has largely supplanted acts from the East and West coasts on the charts. In 2021, when a Complex reporter took Thug to drive by a 20-story housing project in Manhattan, Thug envied the balcony views missing from the Atlanta plans.
“That’s why you can’t compare to us, because you can still go to the top of your building and see the world and see who you want to be,” he said. “We literally had to go to jail and get put on a plane to get to this high level.”
timeHugging’s rise in the 2010s coincided with growing public concern about violent crime in Atlanta, calling for authorities to take significant action. Prosecutors under District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) have zeroed in on Young Thug and two dozen others believed to be connected to him. Investigators searched social media posts for gang symbols and came to believe that some of Thug’s lyrics about crime and shootings were based in reality.
Thug was one of 28 people arrested in a citywide raid on May 9, 2022. The gang’s acronym is the same as Thug’s music label, Young Stoner Life.
“Members and associates of YSL acted as a group, headed by defendant Jeffrey Williams,” Chief Prosecutor Adriane Love said in her opening statement at the trial.
Specifically, Thug is accused of renting the car used in a fatal drive-by incident in 2015 that led to a gang war between two Bloods cast members. But he is accused of participating in a litany of homicides, armed robberies, aggravated assaults, thefts, drug dealing, carjackings and witness intimidation, which his co-defendants are also accused of.
The mob’s attorney, Brian Steele, has denied the charges against his client, who has also pleaded not guilty.
“Prosecutors have arrested a young man who was born into a life of no opportunity, despair and hardship. He has become a world-renowned, award-winning musical artist,” Steele told The Washington Post last year.
Since his arrest, Thug has essentially been living behind bars, except for occasional outings, such as attending his sister’s funeral last year. Every weekday morning, he drove the 20 miles from his jail cell to the courthouse, silently bearing witness to one of the most complex racketeering cases in Georgia history.
Legal experts told The Washington Post that it was unusual for Thug and his co-defendants to be charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a legal framework that was primarily used in the 1980s. Willis and her prosecutors are also using the law to punish Mafia activity and will also try former President Donald Trump this summer on election fraud charges.
RICO laws allow prosecutors to dismantle entire criminal organizations from the streets to the top. If convicted, Sager and his five remaining co-defendants (the others have either reached plea deals or will be tried separately) could face up to two decades in prison. But RICO cases are also notoriously large, complex, and unwieldy, creating opportunities for disruption and delays—all of which were on full display during this case’s lengthy process to conclusion.
timeHis screams frightened everyone. It was April 19, 2023, and the case was in the midst of a year-long jury selection process that has sifted through more than 2,000 potential people. Thug’s head snapped up, some of his co-defendants jumped, and Rodalius Ryan screamed for help from a cell at the end of the court corridor. , serving a life sentence for a 2015 murder.
Video footage of the incident shows the officers nearly losing control of the room. Another co-defendant, Cordarius Dorsey, tried to push his way past the officers at the door in an apparent attempt to get to Ryan. Shannon Stilwell’s representative, Max Schardt, opened his arms and begged the crowd: “Calm down, everyone!”
It was later reported that Ryan screamed as officers strip-searched him. They allegedly found two packages of marijuana in his underwear, according to body camera footage that aired on local news.
Most of the time, the court is controlled by Judge Ural D. Glanville, a career soldier and jovial disciplinarian who brings his service dog, a dog named Jack, with him every day black labrador retriever) enters the courtroom.
Last year, when a potential juror skipped court to visit the Dominican Republic, Granville ordered them to write a 30-page essay in APA style that included primary and secondary sources. When jurors asked for the courtroom to be warmed, Glanville responded that he was keeping it cool to keep everyone awake. A judge told a lawyer who arrived late to a May hearing that he would be held in contempt of court if he did not treat everyone to lunch. (The attorney ordered chicken wings from a nearby strip club.) As Granville grew frustrated with the slow pace of the trial — by mid-April, prosecutors had so far passed only about four of the more than 200 expected witnesses. One – he threatened to hold court over the weekend.
But the surreal nature of the case sometimes eludes judges. During the first week of the trial, Glanville inadvertently went viral on social media for reading out Young Thug lyrics in a monotone drawl. “Fuck the police (fuck them), fast,” Granville recited, slaughtering the crowd. “F——Judge.”
Other incidents are more serious. Last year, a video of a defendant’s interrogation leaked online, sparking an investigation. A defense attorney in the trial was arrested after bringing prescription drugs into the courthouse and allegedly throwing his cellphone at a deputy’s head. One potential juror was briefly jailed for recording court proceedings.
Granville put the trial on hold for several weeks after Stillwell was stabbed in the Fulton County Jail in December, less than a month before the long-awaited trial was to begin.
phosphorusRosecutters have been using rap lyrics as evidence since at least the 1990s, with mixed success despite criticism that white musicians are rarely accused of doing what they sing about. (No one has accused Johnny Cash of saying he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.)
“I think we should all be uncomfortable when forms of artistic expression are treated as literal truths, almost like public confessions,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta. A slippery slope indeed.
Asked for comment, the District Attorney’s Office pointed to a judge’s November 2023 ruling that “the lyrics and related social media evidence are logically and legally relevant and therefore conditionally admitted.”
The trial became an online sensation, with thousands of comments covering every legal argument and cultural impact following a live broadcast from the court and entertainment websites. “Rapper’s birthday wish is for young thug to be released from jail,” reads a headline in The Bets on Wednesday.
In Atlanta, where rap is a multibillion-dollar industry, up-and-coming artists are also wary of trials.
“They are watching [DA] Fani [Willis] It’s like she turned Atlanta into Gotham,” said musician Langston Bleu. “It’s not cool to feel guilty just because you’re really good at selling something.”
Cade Fortunat, an Atlanta musician who sings under the name 4TUNAT, found it ridiculous that the lyrics could be considered evidence. He said that when rappers put the word “Glock” or “AK-47” into a track, they are more likely to think about the syllable structure of the word than remember the actual event.
Z6Saint, an Atlantis native and rapper, noted that Young Thug’s incarceration did not result in much public outcry. But he worries about what will happen to the next generation of rappers if Thug and others are silenced.
“I don’t think people are too worried about it,” he said. “They should probably be more worried about that.”
If Thug has been frozen, it won’t be obvious. He released a new album, “Business Is Business,” in June 2023, illustrated with a photo of himself sitting at the defense table under an empty judge’s bench.
