threat The prospect of a retrial loomed over Young Thug's gang and racketeering trial on Monday, as contentious proceedings resumed in earnest with jurors returning from a nearly two-month recess.
Key prosecution witness Kenneth “Woody” Copeland was scheduled to return to the stand after a previous appearance in the Atlanta case in June that led to a contentious secret meeting. That meeting in turn led to the recusal of the previous judge in the case, Fulton County Chief Judge Oral Glanville.
At a non-jury hearing last week, Copeland told the court he was unsure whether he would appear Monday and testify voluntarily under an immunity agreement with prosecutors or refuse to cooperate, a move that would see him jailed for contempt of court. “It depends on how I wake up,” he told the court Tuesday.
Under Copeland’s order, jurors were to be told to ignore all or part of his previous testimony and any evidence related to his testimony. The new judge in the case, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, said she planned to ask jurors whether they felt they could follow such an instruction. The judge said she wanted to know sooner rather than later whether any juror would respond with “I can’t do that. Once I hear it, I can’t unhear it,” because she would then have to “relieve them of their responsibility.”
“I think if eight jurors say that, we may have a mistrial, but it’s better to go ahead and find out from the beginning as far as I’m concerned,” Judge Whitaker said, acknowledging that the question could blow up the 19-month trial that began with jury selection in January 2023. Whitaker cited the appeals court case as the basis for asking the question and said such a panel inquiry seemed “a very good idea to me.”
The jury hearing the case consists of 12 jurors and four alternates, so it only takes five jurors who say they will not be able to ignore Copeland's testimony in an attempt to retry.
Douglas Weinstein, the attorney for rapper Demonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, one of Williams’ five co-defendants in the current trial, said: Rolling Stone The attorney said Friday that he believes any mistrial linked to Copeland’s testimony should end the case for good. “I would argue that it’s a mistrial based on prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and therefore there should be a double jeopardy and we shouldn’t have a retrial,” he said. Referring to Copeland, the attorney said: “He’s our most colorful witness, certainly our most memorable. How could you forget that?”
During his time on the stand, Copeland swayed back and forth, yawned dramatically and admitted that he was giving robotic answers without listening to questions. His repeated “I don’t remember” response became a social media meme. Whether he was colored or not, Copeland is a key witness in the case. Prosecutors describe him as an unindicted co-conspirator and a member of the alleged “Young Slime Life” gang at the heart of the trial. In a series of interviews with investigators, Copeland made varying and often inconsistent statements about things he allegedly heard in the aftermath of a 2015 murder listed in the indictment. Prosecutors are using parts of those statements to support their claim that Kendrick and another defendant now on trial, Shannon Stillwell, were involved in the fatal shooting.
In the 65-count indictment, which lists 28 defendants, prosecutors allege that YSL was an affiliate of the Bloods gang that terrorized Atlanta with drug sales, armed robberies, shootings and three murders. Prosecutors allege that Young Thug, born Jeffrey Williams, co-founded and led the gang, rising to prominence in the music industry and winning a Grammy award in the process. Williams has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Brian Steele, has denounced the state’s RICO indictment as “unfair.” In his recusal filings, Steele called the judge “unethical” and the trial “broken.”
Last November, Steele said of Williams in his opening statement: “He doesn’t run this criminal gang on the streets. He doesn’t sit there and tell people to kill each other. He doesn’t need their money. Jeffrey is worth tens of millions of dollars.”
