trial

More than three years after Young Thug, Gunna and dozens of others were indicted in Atlanta on gang charges, Thug’s last co-defendant has pleaded guilty.

A trial had been set to start Monday (June 9) in Fulton County court for Christian Eppinger, who stood accused of attempted murder for allegedly shooting an Atlanta police officer in 2022. But he instead entered a so-called Alford plea, allowing him to technically plead guilty while maintaining that he is innocent; he was later sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Eppinger was the last remaining defendant of 28 men indicted in May 2022 by Fulton County prosecutors, who claimed that Thug’s “YSL” — nominally a record label — was also a violent gang called “Young Slime Life” that had wrought “havoc” on Atlanta for years. Thug was released from jail in October after a judge sentenced him to just probation, a stunning defeat for District Attorney Fani Willis after her office had labeled him a dangerous gang boss.

Asked Friday (June 6) if the massive prosecution had been a “waste of taxpayer money,” Willis vehemently defended the case and stressed that it had resulted in 19 convictions: “What my constituents say, who just voted me by 68 percent, is she’s doing an amazing job,” Willis told Atlanta’s NBC affiliate. “We are making sure that this community is safe.”

A representative for the DA’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.

Pitting prosecutors in America’s rap capital against a chart-topping rapper who helped shape the sound of hip-hop in the 2010s, the YSL case captivated the music business for years. Most notably, it relied heavily on song lyrics as evidence, a controversial practice that has drawn backlash from the music industry and efforts by lawmakers to stop it.

The case also saw Thug sit in jail for years while the messy proceedings — the longest in state history — played out in court, turning his charges into a cause célèbre and raising big questions about procedural fairness. Gunna, a frequent collaborator and protégé of Thug, was also initially charged, though he quickly pleaded out.

The charges against Thug and the other YSL members were built on Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, a state-level version of the federal RICO law used against the Mafia, drug cartels and other large criminal enterprises. Prosecutors alleged that members of the YSL enterprise had committed murders, carjackings, drug dealing and many other crimes — and that Thug was the “King Slime” crime boss running the operation from the top.

But when the trial kicked off in January 2023, that sweeping narrative proved difficult to litigate in court.

After an unprecedented 10-month jury selection process, prosecutors slowly worked through a vast list of witnesses that included more than 100 names. Last summer, the case was delayed for weeks due to a bizarre episode over a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a witness — an incident that saw the judge removed from the case. Things got worse for the DA’s office in October, when botched testimony from a state’s witness sparked talk of a mistrial and prompted a wave of plea deals.

Prosecutors offered such a deal to Thug, but it would have seen him spend 25 years in prison. Thug’s attorneys rejected that offer and instead opted to simply plead guilty — a gamble that paid off spectacularly when Judge Paige Reese Whitaker sentenced him to just probation with no time served in prison.

“I know you’re talented, and if you choose to continue to rap, you need to try to use your influence to let kids know that is not the way to go and that there are ways out of poverty besides hooking up with the powerful guy at the end of the street selling drugs,” Whitaker said.

After that, just two key defendants — Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick and Shannon Stillwell — remained in the trial, facing some of the most serious charges in the case, including carrying out the 2015 murder of rival gang leader Donovan Thomas that played a central role in the prosecution’s case. But a jury largely acquitted them on those counts in December, and both were released immediately after the verdicts.

Those verdicts ended the trial, but not the case. Eppinger and several others had been separated from the case early in the proceedings to face their own trials on charges related to YSL.

Eppinger, an aspiring rapper who used the performing name “Big Bhris,” pleaded guilty to a slew of charges on Monday, including armed robbery and RICO conspiracy. Though he was sentenced to 40 years, it will be served concurrently with an existing 45-year sentence on an earlier crime, meaning he did not receive any additional prison time.

Though the Thomas killing formed a core part of the YSL case — Young Thug was alleged to have helped rent the car that was used in the drive-by shooting — no defendants were ever convicted of the murder. The last defendant alleged to have been involved, Damekion Garlington, took a plea deal last month that saw him sentenced to five years in prison for aggravated assault.

In the Friday interview, Willis argued that crime had dropped in Fulton County “because of the efforts I have done against gangs.” And she harshly criticized others — media outlets for “glorifying violence,” defense attorneys who “don’t care about the African American community,” and even Judge Whitaker — for how the YSL case has been portrayed.

“It was an amazing time. We had 19 convictions. The community is safer,” Willis said. “We made sure that we got the resolutions that we want. If they’re unhappy with sentencing, they should elect other judges.”