Sound and Sociology: How the Young Thug trial highlights issues within our criminal justice system

Just last week, on Halloween, Grammy Award-winning rapper Young Thug — whose government name is Jeffery Williams — pleaded guilty to six of eight crimes that he had been charged with. It was a non-negotiated plea deal, meaning that he admitted guilt without deliberating with prosecutors. Though Thug pleaded guilty to gang, drug and gun charges, he opted to plead no contest to another gang charge and a racketeering conspiracy charge. 

Despite being sentenced to 40 years in prison for the crimes committed, the judge commuted the sentence to time already served, leaving Thug with only 15 years of probation with rather loose stipulations considering his wealth and status. This man basically got a slap on the wrist. 

While this is an impressive feat, I don’t think it’s much of a surprise considering how Georgia's RICO act operates, as well as how messy the trial was from the beginning.  

RICO is short for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. The federal act was signed into law in 1970 as a means of catching the heads of crime organizations and syndicates. 

Thug was tried in a Georgia Superior Court, meaning that he was charged with the conspiracy to violate the state RICO laws rather than the federal RICO laws. Georgia’s sentencing minimum for being found guilty of a RICO violation is at least five years, with the maximum being 20. This is much lighter than the federal mandatory minimum, which is 10 years. 

While the sentencing in Georgia is much less extreme, the prohibited activities listed under the state statute are much broader than the federal one. Ideally, this would make Thug a much easier target for the prosecution. But no, that would be too easy. 

With a jury selection process that took nearly 10 months, three different judges having resided over the case, plea deals being handed out like Halloween candy, and over 700 witnesses , Georgia’s longest running trial can be compared to a long ass season of a messy reality show.  

To get an idea of how badly the state wanted to convict Thug, his 2022 bond hearing saw that his bail was denied out of fears of witness intimidation leading up to the trial. 

The prosecution held that he was too "dangerous" to be allowed on the streets, despite his defense explaining to the judge that he would pay for a house arrest plan to make sure nothing would happen. 

However, their need to ensure Thug’s conviction came at the expense of a weak case and weak arguments. As I stated earlier, over 700 witnesses were originally involved with this case, with the prosecution relying on many of the testimonies that would implicate that Young Stoner Life — YSL —  was a gang and that Thug was the leader of said gang. 

Where I think the prosecution fell flat was with their lack of insight when it came to who exactly they were asking to testify. Many of the witnesses were uncooperative during their testimonies, and the best example of this is Lil Woody . 

After being arrested in 2021 for gun possession charges, Lil Woody — aka Kenneth Copeland —  claimed that he had knowledge about a potential shooting that was going to happen involving YSL and Young Thug. With this knowledge, the state had brought him onto the trial as a key witness, relying heavily on his testimony to solidify their argument and even granting him immunity on the stand for extra assurance. 

But the moment Woody began his testimony, things started to fall apart. From purposely being difficult during his interactions with the prosecution to actively admitting that he lied about certain details and events during his interrogation with police, Woody was about as unhelpful with the case as JR Smith was to the Cavaliers during the 2018 NBA finals. 

An example  of this would be when prosecutor Simone Hylton was asking Woody specific questions about a potential rivalry with Young Thug and rapper Rich Homie Quan's friend, trying to insinuate that the beef between the two men was gang related. In one of the funniest moments of the trial, Woody instead turns to Thug and repeats the question Hylton had just asked. 

Woody’s testimony and overall presence in the case is filled with so many chaotic moments, with one of the most significant ones being the ex parte — which translates to “on one side only” in Latin — meeting he had with the prosecution and the first judge.

This brings me to arguably the messiest aspect of the case: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville. 

I don’t even know where to begin with this man. I think he has some sort of power trip issue, because all throughout the trial he was holding people in contempt of court for some of the smallest things. One juror who didn’t know about the court’s no-phone policy was held in contempt and given jail time. 

Another juror who had a conflicting travel date with her jury service was forced to write a 30-page paper  on the importance of jury service. One of the defense attorneys was even held in contempt and arrested for carrying prescription pills outside of their original container. 

I think the most baffling thing Glanville did was the aforementioned ex parte meeting that he held between himself, Woody and the prosecution. 

Despite the state having offered Woody immunity from any implicating statements on the stand, Judge Glanville threatened to put Woody in jail if he didn’t cooperate more with the prosecutors. 

This meeting is prohibited by Georgia’s rule of judicial conduct 2.9, which explicitly states that ex parte meetings are highly unethical and deprives the defendant of their right to due process and a fair trial. 

Upon finding out about this, Young Thug’s attorney, Brian Steel, raised a motion to confront the judge about the ex parte meeting, and rather than outright denying the allegation Glanville simply demanded that Steel tell him who leaked information about the meeting. 

The two went back and forth for quite some time before the judge threatened to have Steel arrested and jailed if he didn’t give up who exposed the meeting. Unwavering, Steel stood his ground, and true to the judges word, he was arrested and sentenced to 20 days in jail, though he ultimately didn’t serve the time. 

On so many occasions, Glanville seemed to abuse his power and preside over the case in egregious ways, and it all eventually caught up to him when he was officially removed from the case. 

For both Glanville and the prosecutors to slip up so many times without facing any repercussions honestly baffles me. The fact that none of aforementioned injustices will impact their careers is indicative of a much larger issue with our criminal justice system. 

Prosecutors are granted far too much discretion within our current justice system. They have all of the power. They are able to determine what charges are being pressed against defendants, request high bail or argue for no bail and convince people into taking plea deals for crimes that they had relatively little involvement in — or even no involvement at all. 

Despite having the power to quite literally ruin people’s lives, the prosecution often doesn’t face any repercussions for misconduct. This shows the public that the system is inherently biased toward a heavy hand during prosecution. The RICO trial of Young Thug has put a lot of this misconduct on full display for the country to see and has shown that there are deeply rooted flaws within our criminal justice system.