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Gunna has seemingly moved on from his connection to Young Thug and the wider YSL collective, and a new development in the ongoing RICO case has emerged. According to a fan account on X, formerly Twitter, Gunna will not take the stand in the case.
@ThuggerDaily, an account on X that has been following the YSL RICO trial and offering up-close accounts of the matter, shared the latest news around Gunna via the social media network. The account noted that prosecutors will not call the A Gift & a Curse artist to the stand.
“The State has CONFIRMED that Gunna will NOT be called to the witness stand in the Young Thug & YSL RICO Trial,” @ThuggerDaily wrote. “The judge ordered the state to cut down their list of 700+ witnesses to the ones that they currently intend to call.”
They added,” Their new list of ~200 witnesses names multiple co-defendants who took pleas as witnesses they want to call, but no Gunna. The state not calling him shouldn’t come as a surprise to people who were following the case, but the confirmation is good to have. Will tweet the full list later today.”
The full list of the state’s witnesses can be viewed in the tweet below. As far as we can tell, this is as accurate a report as there can be although we are looking into the details on our end as well. There are several notable names on the list, including Birdman, Rich Homie Quan, YFN Lucci, and more.
Gunna into an Alford plea in 2022 which signaled that he solely plead guilty to one racketeering conspiracy charge but remaining steadfast in his innocence.
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The RICO trial of Young Thug gained another wild moment as a witness admitted to being high while testifying.
On Tuesday (March 19), the racketeering trial of rap star Young Thug and the YSL (Young Slime Life) crew was underway in a Fulton County courtroom. The defense attorneys for Young Thug called Adrian Bean, a witness for the prosecution to the stand. As cross-examination began, Bean leaned forward with his eyes semi-closed. “Man, umm,” he began, “Can I get a water or something? I’m so high right now, y’all, I’m about to go to sleep on y’all now. I am. I ain’t gon’ tell a lie.”
The revelation prompted lead prosecutor and District Attorney Adriane Love to ask Fulton County Supreme Court Judge Ural Glanville for permission to approach the bench. Love brought Bean a bottle of water while Brian Steel, Young Thug’s attorney, asked if Bean was okay enough to continue. Despite expressing how his condition was, Bean replied, “Let’s keep the ball rolling.” The entire moment was captured in the Livestream of the trial.
Bean was called to the trial by the prosecution due to him being one of the witnesses they’re relying on to establish that Young Thug, aka Jeffrey Williams, was at the scene where Donovan Thomas Jr. was killed in a drive-by shooting Sept. 11, 2013. But further cross-examination by the defense of Bean seemed to support their argument that police were pressuring Bean to say Young Thug was at the scene. Bean also expressed that he couldn’t recall key facts during testimony he gave in February, citing his history of drug use.
The trial has seen multiple instances of outlandish behavior from one attorney joking that they would open an OnlyFans account to supplement their income to DA Love and a defense attorney getting into an argument so heated that Judge Glanville had to step in and ask them to “take it down a notch.” He also found himself admonishing the courtroom audience as a defense lawyer quipped about the exchange later that day. “I didn’t ask anyone to laugh in the gallery. This is a courtroom. Not some entertainment forum for you,” Judge Glanville stated.
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The lawyer for R. Kelly pleaded for the overturning of his sexual abuse conviction, claiming that prosecutors misused racketeering laws.
On Monday (March 18), the attorney for disgraced singer R. Kelly was in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which convened in Manhattan, NY, to appeal his convictions for running a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls whom he sexually abused under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO law.
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean argued before the three-judge panel that the application used by federal prosecutors to gain those convictions was “preposterous.”
“The government has extended the RICO statute to a set of circumstances that is so beyond what the framers intended, which was to get at organized crime,” Bonjean said to the judges. “Now, we’re talking about an organization with an alleged criminal, but not organized crime.” Bonjean also argued that it framed Kelly and those he worked with in an improper light related to the charges, which also included the production of child pornography. “This was not a collection of people who had a purpose to recruit girls for sexual abuse or child pornography,” she said. “Whether they turned a blind eye, whether some of them suspected that some of these girls were underage, that’s a whole different matter.”
Assistant United States Attorney Kayla Crews Bensing argued on behalf of the government and refuted Bonjean’s claims.
“The defendant had a system in place that lured young people into his orbit and then took over their lives,” she told the panel of judges, pointing to evidence that those who worked with Kelly knew of his intent and actions. “This is all evidence that the jury was entitled to infer that Kelly’s inner circle knew what was going on: that he was recruiting and maintaining underage women for sexual activity,” Bensing stated.
Bonjean also encountered pushback from the judges. “RICO is looking at organizations, that are then used to commit criminal acts,” Judge Denny Chin said regarding Bonjean’s argument on RICO. “It doesn’t have to be a criminal organization. It could be a completely legitimate organization. But if it engages in racketeering activity, it violates RICO.”
The panel is expected to rule on the appeal this week. While Bonjean has successfully gained an appeal in a similar case with Bill Cosby, the odds of the 57-year-old singer’s convictions being overturned are highly unlikely.
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R. Kelly’s attorney on Monday (Mar. 18) urged a federal appeals court to overturn the singer’s sexual abuse convictions, warning that the case against Kelly stretched federal racketeering laws “to the point of absurdity” and could potentially turn college fraternities into illegal conspiracies.
At a hearing before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyer Jennifer Bonjean told a panel of judges that Kelly’s employees had just been “unwitting” staffers performing “anodyne” tasks for a famous person, not a group with a criminal “purpose” like the Mafia or a drug cartel.
Seeking to reverse Kelly’s conviction under the federal RICO law (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), Bonjean accused prosecutors of using that law in a “preposterous” new way.
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“The government has extended the RICO statute to a set of circumstances that is so beyond what the framers intended, which was to get at organized crime,” Bonjean said. “Now, we’re talking about an organization with an alleged criminal, but not organized crime.”
After decades of accusations of sexual misconduct, Kelly was convicted in September 2021 on nine RICO counts related to accusations that the singer had orchestrated a long-running scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. In 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
At Monday’s hearing, Bonjean repeatedly told the judges that the government had failed to prove that members of Kelly’s organization knew crimes were being committed, meaning the RICO law didn’t apply. She said, for instance, that staffers didn’t know any of the women were underage.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kayla Crews Bensing, arguing back for the government, sharply rejected that claim: “The defendant had a system in place that lured young people into his orbit and then took over their lives,” she told the judges.
Bensing pointed to specific evidence that members of Kelly’s organization had been aware of the organization’s ill intent. She cited testimony that one victim had been approached by a member of Kelly’s entourage at a McDonalds, that she told him that she was only 16 years old and that he had then given her Kelly’s number and told her to call him. Another Kelly employee testified that he had answered phones for “Kelly’s girlfriends,” Bensing said, some of whom he identified as “mid-aged teenagers.”
“This is all evidence that the jury was entitled to infer that Kelly’s inner circle knew what was going on: that he was recruiting and maintaining underage women for sexual activity,” Bensing said.
Kelly faces long odds in his battle to topple his conviction, as federal appeals courts only overturn a small percentage of the convictions that are appealed each year. But Bonjean has had success in such cases in the past, most notably winning a 2021 ruling that overturned Bill Cosby’s 2018 sex assault conviction.
Following Monday’s arguments, the court will issue a ruling in the coming months.
Like in many appeals, large parts of Monday’s hearing were spent wrangling over in-the-weeds legal issues, like whether a single sexual act could fit the definition of “forced labor” under federal law, or whether Bonjean even had a procedurally proper way to fight her appeal since Kelly’s previous attorneys had failed to challenge the instructions given to the jury at trial.
On her main point about whether RICO requires an illicit “purpose,” Bonjean repeatedly faced pushback from the judges. The judges pointed out on multiple occasions that there is no written requirement that the law only be used against outright criminal organizations, and one judge specifically noted that labor unions had been repeatedly charged with violating RICO.
“RICO is looking at organizations, that are then used to commit criminal acts,” Judge Denny Chin said. “It doesn’t have to be a criminal organization. It could be a completely legitimate organization. But if it engages in racketeering activity, it violates RICO.”
But Bonjean remained adamant, arguing that the statute could not be brought to bear against an organization like Kelly’s, which she said merely had the purpose of promoting his musical career and personal brand.
“This was not a collection of people who had a purpose to recruit girls for sexual abuse,” Bonjean said. “Whether they turned a blind eye, whether some of them suspected that some of these girls were underage, that’s a whole different matter.”
“Once we get into that sort of territory, where we’re going say that that constitutes a RICO enterprise, we have a lot of organizations, we have a lot of frat houses, we have all types of organizations that are now going to become RICO enterprises,” Bonjean added.
Pushing the point further, Bonjean said that such an approach would have allowed federal prosecutors to charge infamous Ponzi scheme perpetraor Bernie Madoff with RICO violations rather than the slew of fraud charges he actually faced. At that point, Judge Richard J. Sullivan cut in.
“Well, he got 150 years,” Sullivan said. “I don’t think that it mattered.”
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One of Cardi B’s friends will have to spend some time in jail. Star Brim has just been sentenced in her RICO case.
Per the United States Department Of Justice (DOJ) the woman born Yonette Respass pleaded guilty to involvement in criminal activity relating to the 59 Brims; an alleged subset of the Bloods. The gang reportedly carried out various crimes including assault, racketeering, firearm offenses, distribution of narcotics and murder. According to the DOJ, Star Brim served as the gang’s highest-ranking female member and not only directly participated in the ongoing conspiracy, but also ordered the slashing of an unnamed individual.
The original indictment was made back in February 2020. At the time of the announcement, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea made it clear that this was a collaborative effort between local New York City police and federal authorities.
“Targeting and dismantling gangs and crews, and preventing the violence so often associated with their illegal activities, continues to be one of our highest priorities. By using precision policing we are targeting the small percentage of people responsible for committing much of the violence in New York, and making the safest large city in America even safer. I’d like to thank our law enforcement partners for their efforts in helping us achieve this goal.”
Star Brim has been sentenced to one year and one day behind bars and three years of supervised release. Seventeen other individuals connected to the 59 Brims also were charged.
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Trontavious Stephens, a co-founder of YSL, took the stand in the ongoing RICO trial where Young Thug and his co-defendants hope to disassociate themselves from alleged ties to criminal activity. During the 20th day of the trial, Stephens explained Young Thug’s name, gang signs, and more.
As reported by local outlet Fox 5 Atlanta, Trontavious Stephens, 30, was questioned at length by prosecutors looking to land a big win in taking down Thug and his co-defendants over their alleged criminal acts. During the series of cross-examinations spanning days, Stephens, also known as Tick or Slug, discussed his YSL connection, alleged gang connections, and his plea deal.
On Monday (Jan. 22), LeBron James, Snoop Dogg, and other known figures were mentioned for their use of alleged gang signs. The defense raised a counter by saying that the insinuation that these figures are members of gangs or promoting gang culture can be proven.
The defense also played a clip of Snoop Dogg taking the stage at the 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show where the Long Beach rapper wore a blue bandana, assumed to be a reference to the Crips gang, along with the rapper’s signature “crip walk” and their side says that does not prove true affiliation. The defense showed Serena Williams doing the same dance in an earlier portion of the trial.
Stephens also hammered home to the prosecution that the “Thug” in Young Thug’s stage name stands for “Truly Humble Under God,” a point raised earlier in the trial. The trial was to resume on Wednesday (Jan. 24) but as Fox 5 Atlanta reports, the trial was halted for reasons not known to the public.
A recording of the trial can be seen below, along with reactions from X, formerly Twitter.
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Shannon Stillwell, a defendant in the YSL RICO trial, was stabbed multiple times in Fulton County Jail with reports going wide that the trial would be delayed. The jury in the trial was dismissed early on Monday (December 10) in connection to the stabbing incident.
FOX 5 Atlanta reports that Shannon Stillwell, also known as Shannon Brown or “SB,” was stabbed by inmate Willie Brown several times after the pair got into a fight. Officials are unaware of what started the fight but what has come out is that Brown is in jail for several violent crimes, including murder, and is being held without bond.
Stillwell is one of five defendants connected to the murder of Donovan Thomas Jr., who was shot and killed in 2015. Thomas was believed to be part of a rival gang to YSL with prosecutors claiming Young Thug rented the vehicle used for the drive-by shooting that also left a teen boy harmed.
According to reports, Stillwell is said to be in stable condition and his attorney assured that their side will not look for a delay in the trial as his client recovers.
“Out of respect for Shannon’s privacy, I will not go into specifics about his health other than to say that I was happy to be able to see him and converse with him this afternoon,” the attorney said. “I encouraged him to rest, as he will need to be strong as we continue to fight the false allegations contained in the RICO indictment. We have never and will not be asking for a delay in this trial, but also recognize that the doctors will let us know what is best for Shannon in the immediate future. I hope to reunite Shannon with his family and loved ones in short order.”
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Young Thug and his legal team delivered opening statements on Tuesday (November 28), with an attorney telling the court that the rapper’s lyrics are not evidence of crimes. Instead, the lawyer argued that the music told stories about the rough upbringing Young Thug experienced in the streets of Atlanta and not that of an assumed crime lord.
The RICO trial brought by the state of Georgia against Young Thug and over two dozeon other defendants connected to the alleged street operation YSL opened on Monday (November 27) with prosecutors stating that the rapper, born Jeffrey Williams, was the mastermind of a criminal organization.
As seen in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, attorney Brian Steel pushed back at the assertion that Thug’s success was tied to street crimes instead of his successful music career. Framing Thug’s humble upbringing in an Atlanta housing project as one of 11 children, Steel says that the music the rapper would go on to make was nothing more than him unpacking the things he saw as a young person.
Steel’s statements contrasted with those made by Fulton County’s chief deputy district attorney, Adriane Love, who referred to Young Thug under another name: King Slime. Love stated that as King Slime, Thug directed the YSL gang that, quote, “moved like a pack” under his leadership.
Judge Ural Glanville granted prosecutors passage to use 17 sets of lyrics from Thug in the trial to prove their case. Steel argues that the use of the lyrics is nothing more than artistic expression and a violation of free speech.
On X, formerly Twitter, fans are reacting to Young Thug and his current ordeal. Check out those replies below.
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Young Thug’s attorney told jurors Tuesday (Nov. 28) that his client was “born into a society filled with despair” and merely rapped about violent crime because “these are the stories he knew” — and that prosecutors had cherry-picked lyrics that matched the crimes they hoped to pin against him.
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A day after Atlanta prosecutors kicked off the artist’s racketeering trial by accusing Thug (Jeffery Williams) of running a criminal street gang that operated like a “pack” of wolves, his attorney, Brian Steel, responded by telling the jury that the rapper “doesn’t even know most of the people in this indictment” and had no reason to run a criminal organization.
“He’s not sitting there telling people to kill people,” Steel said. “He doesn’t need their money. Jeffery is worth tens of millions of dollars.”
In addition to refuting each of the alleged “overt acts” that form the basis for the RICO case against Thug, Steel defended his client’s First Amendment right to rap about the dangerous conditions he faced growing up in Atlanta’s Cleveland Avenue neighborhood.
“Yes, he speaks about ‘killing 12’ and people being shot and drugs and drive-by shootings,” Steel said, referring to a phrase that allegedly refers to murdering police. “This is the environment he grew up in. These are the people he knew, these are the stories he knew. These are the words he rhymed.”
“This is art,” Steel added. “This is freedom of speech.”
Thug (Jeffery Williams) was indicted last year on accusations that his “YSL” was not really a record label/music collective called “Young Stoner Life,” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life” that committed murders, carjackings, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
Along with other charges, Thug stands accused of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law based on the more famous federal RICO statute that’s been used to target the mafia, drug cartels and other forms of organized crime. If convicted on all eight of his counts, Thug faces decades in prison.
Go read an explainer of the YSL case here, including a full breakdown of the charges and a deep-dive into the background of the accusations.
Throughout his opening statements Tuesday, Steel told a story of a young, impoverished kid whose disdain for police and the justice system stemmed from real-life instances of neglect and mistreatment. Steel said Thug had watched presumably innocent people face serious consequences after “snitches” told lies to them, and had witnessed his mother be handcuffed after his brother had been shot. During that incident, Steel said Thug had watched police place a sheet over his brother’s face despite the fact that he was still breathing.
Describing his client as a malnourished child with rotted teeth, Steel said Thug had turned to rap as a way out of poverty. He “idolized” rappers Lil Wayne and 2Pac, the attorney told jurors, and even took his stage name from the latter’s 1995 song with Smooth titled “P.Y.T (Playa Young Thugs).” Steel said the stage name wasn’t intended to be menacing but is, instead, an acronym for ‘truly humbled under God.’
Steel spent a majority of his more than two hours of opening statements going through each of the individual charges and “overt acts” — the small actions that make up a RICO charge.
One of those alleged acts is that Young Thug rented a 2014 Silver Infiniti Q50 sedan that was allegedly used during the murder of a rival gang leader, Donovan Thomas, in 2015. But Steel denied that Thug had any involvement in the killing, saying he had regularly rented cars for friends and had been “sad” to learn of Thomas’ death.
Steel frequently criticized the use of rap lyrics as evidence — a controversial prosecutorial tactic that has drawn criticism in recent years. During Monday’s opening statements, for instance, prosecutors told jurors that a particular Thug lyric — “hundred rounds in a Tahoe” from the song “Slime Shit” — referred to Donovan’s killing in a Chevy Tahoe. But Steel disputed that argument, saying Thug rapped about various cars often and there was “no evidence of when that lyric was even created.”
At other points Tuesday, Steel repeatedly questioned the trustworthiness of Kenneth Copeland, a former YSL member who made headlines earlier this year when a video leaked showing him talking with police investigators. The attorney described Copeland as a “leech” and “snitch” who had lied to investigators to avoid facing his own criminal charges.
Copeland is listed as a prosecution witness in the case, and Steel’s statements — which suggested that Copeland could have actually committed some of the crimes in the indictment — indicate he believes Copeland could be a key witness for the other side.
Several of the alleged acts refuted by Steel involved riffs or interactions with other rappers, including the allegation that YSL affiliates had once fired gunshots at rapper Lil Wayne’s tour bus in service of Young Thug.
During his statements, Steel acknowledged that Thug had recorded a video about Wayne’s Atlanta appearance that showed him surrounded by people with guns. But he said Thug had been told to create the video by his management for entertainment reasons because such a beef “creates interest in fans.”
Steel also noted Thug’s publicized disputes with YFN Lucci. The attorney described Lucci as a less successful rapper who used Thug’s name for clout, including claiming to have sex with Thug’s fiancé. Steel asked the jury if the leader of a criminal street gang would’ve let that go unscathed for so long.
Thug’s attorney also alluded to Lil Uzi Vert, accusing prosecutors of misrepresenting text messages to make it appear that Thug was threatening the fellow rapper’s life when he wrote “YSL Rule the world kid. 24m on a nigga head…” Steel said the text was not a bounty but rather an innocuous reference to Vert’s highly-publicized decision to have a $24 million diamond implanted in his forehead.
The YSL trial will continue Wednesday with more opening statements from attorneys for the other five defendants (Marquavius Huey, Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, Quamarvious Nichols, Rodalius Ryan and Shannon Stillwell). Once openers conclude, the district attorney’s office will begin presenting its case and calling witnesses – a process that could last months.
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Young Thug and his associates will finally have their chance in court. The opening statements for the YSL RICO trial began today.
Raw Story is reporting that the much anticipated federal trial regarding Young Thug allegedly running an organized criminal empire commenced today. According to CNN the prosecutor immediately came out swinging and portrayed YSL as a miniature mafia. “YSL operated as a pact,” said Fulton County Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love, and claimed Young Thug was “King Slime.” She went on to further detail their supposed operation. “They created a crater in the middle of Fulton County’s Cleveland Avenue community that sucked in the youth, the innocence and even the lives of some of its youngest members,” she added. The prosecutor also says the “Ski” rapper made sure to not have direct dealings with his team when it came to executing his criminal requests saying Thug “knew that he needed to have distance between himself and the crimes members and associates of YSL were committing on behalf of the gang.”
The road to get this case in front of a judge has been a long one. The man born Jeffery Williams and several members of his team were booked by federal authorities on varying charges related to racketeering, theft, distribution of narcotics and criminal conspiracy to name a few. On May 9, 20222 Young Thug and Gunna were among the 28 members of Young Stoner Life who were in a 56-count Georgia RICO. Since then bringing it to trial has been marred by a host of problems including a jury selection that almost took 10 months and a co-defendant who allegedly tried to pass Young Thug a pill of Percocet.
If found guilty Young Thug could face five to 20 years in prison if found guilty.
