For Sharadiant Turner and her siblings, the six-year wait for justice in their mother’s shooting death was excruciating.
The prosecutors’ case against the man accused of killing her mother, Tynesha Evans, was delayed multiple times: first by the COVID-19 pandemic and related court shutdowns, and then because the accused man’s defense attorney was tied up in what would become the longest-running trial in state history.
“We were expected to go on with our lives as if the system hadn’t failed us, as if the loss of our mother was a wound that kept getting reopened every single time her case was pushed aside,” Turner said. “It was a clear message that was sent. It was if your case doesn’t come with headlines and public interest, you’ll be pushed to the back of the line.”
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
How YSL unfolded
When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced in May 2022 the indictment of Atlanta rappers Young Thug, Gunna and 26 other defendants in the “Young Slime Life” case, she claimed it as a victory in the battle against crime and gangs in Atlanta.
The majority of the defendants, including Young Thug, ended up taking plea deals that included prison sentences for some and yearslong probation for others.
In a statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the DA’s office said Willis promised Fulton County citizens that she would “aggressively prosecute the most dangerous offenders” and cited a drop in violent crime in Atlanta as evidence the strategy is working, saying that more than 300 defendants have been convicted on gang or racketeering charges in the past three years.
“Those convictions hold accountable people who commit a disproportionate amount of violence. It removes them from the neighborhoods they have terrorized and away from kids they can recruit into a gang life that too often leads to a prison cell or a cemetery,” the DA’s office said in the statement.
Credit: Jason Getz
Credit: Jason Getz
Willis’ office declined to comment specifically on the YSL trial because there are three defendants whose cases still haven’t been heard.
The trial, which began with a grueling 10-month jury selection process in January 2023, was repeatedly delayed for reasons ranging from contraband being brought into court to prospective jurors getting in trouble during the selection process to defense attorneys getting in trouble after allegedly entering the courtroom with some of prescription medication.
Opening statements finally took place in November 2023, and a verdict was reached more than a year later, on December 2024, with a single conviction on a minor gun charge. None of the 28 defendants were convicted on charges related to the three separate murders outlined in the indictment.
The length of the gang case —and the sheer number of defendants involved, each of whom needed a defense attorney — meant that many other criminal cases statewide had to be put on hold as those defense attorneys’ calendars were blocked out for the trial, worsening an already full backlog of cases stemming from the COVID-19 shutdowns.
Justice delayed
Turner’s mother, a 45-year-old single mother of four, was shot and killed outside an Alpharetta bank in March 2019. It wasn’t until last month that the case was finally resolved following a plea deal with Evans’ “on-again, off-again” boyfriend Othniel Inniss for a 25-year sentence on a reduced involuntary manslaughter charge.
Evans’ family spent the past six years looking for answers. Turner, who lives in Los Angeles, said she got barely two weeks notice that the sentencing would happen, which made it impossible for her to travel across the country and be there when her mother’s killer was sentenced.
“When it finally was happening, I felt helpless. I can’t get back to the courtroom to see this happen. I can’t look her killer in the face, I can’t do anything because they were so careless with how they went about our case,” Turner said, adding that they felt rushed and like “just another number on the docket.”
Attorney Doug Weinstein, who represented Deamonte Kendrick in the YSL trial alongside attorneys Jay Abt and Katie Hingerty until Kendrick was acquitted on all charges, also represented Inniss in Turner’s mother’s murder case.
“It’s not just the defendants that aren’t getting justice or where justice is delayed, it’s the victims’ families. Don’t forget about them,” Weinstein said.
Credit: Provided by Tynesha Evans family
Credit: Provided by Tynesha Evans family
Weinstein said he and Abt had around 60 clients, including Inniss, whose cases were delayed because they couldn’t defend them at the same time as the YSL trial. He blamed the DA’s office for gumming up the works with its trial strategy.
“You didn’t have to jam up the whole court system of Georgia,” Weinstein said, adding that the 28 defendants indicted could have been broken up in smaller chunks.
Former gang prosecutor Charlie Bailey, a close ally of Willis, said breaking up the case into smaller pieces wouldn’t have been more efficient or practical because that would have meant more judges, courtrooms, attorneys and jurors tied up, and repeat testimony from witnesses.
“The only thing that actually reduces (time in courtroom) is just not charging as many people, and I don’t think the people of Fulton County or frankly anybody in America said, ‘yeah, I just want my DA not to charge some people because it might take longer,‘” Bailey said.
Other cases impacted
Joe Mediate and his wife have been waiting to get justice since the night their son, Connor, was shot and killed during an alleged drug exchange gone wrong. After the October 2021 shooting, two former Milton High School basketball players, Jonathan Murray and Cameron Walker, were arrested and charged with murder. The two are currently out on bond.
“I feel that there’s no sense of urgency here and I feel like they’re catering to the criminals more so than catering to the victims,” Mediate said about his son’s case.
The problem in Mediate’s case is the same one the Evans’ family faced: a defense attorney — in this case, Bruce Harvey — had been tied up with the YSL trial.
Harvey, who represents Murray in the case, has filed multiple conflict letters asking for delays.
Mediate said the memories were too painful and his family was worried about possible retaliation because the suspects were out on bond, so they left the state after the shooting. He feels the legal system has failed his family.
“It’s hard to keep the faith. It really is because this is unacceptable. It’s horrific what’s going on and I want to believe in the system, but our belief is waning,” he said.
The trial was originally scheduled to take place in January, but was later moved to March 24. However, it has been moved again to an undetermined date after defense attorneys filed conflict letters.
Another high-profile case delayed for years was in coastal Georgia, where former Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson, who was indicted in September 2021, faced charges for alleged interference in the Ahmaud Arbery murder investigation. Johnson’s attorneys Brian Steel and Keith Adams were tied up in the YSL trial, where they represented Young Thug.
Shortly after the rapper took a plea deal in October 2024, Superior Court Judge John R. Turner set the Johnson trial to start in January.
“We’ve been waiting for this a long time,” Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., told the AJC before the January trial. “Too long, to tell you the truth.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Losing clients
The long delays triggered by the labyrinthine YSL trial were also bad for business, Weinstein said. He, along with attorney Angela D’Williams, who represented Rodalius Ryan in the YSL case, say they lost a number of clients who didn’t want to wait or were frustrated their cases weren’t moving along.
D’Williams, who handles immigration cases, said many clients wanted to get their cases resolved as soon as possible after President Donald Trump announced his reelection bid.
Once YSL was over, judges began calling from across the state for defense attorneys to appear in their courtroom to resolve their caseload, D’Williams said.
“It’s been a week and I was still trying to digest what had happened and they didn’t care, so I just had to start going to court unprepared,” she said.
In Georgia, conflict rules state that trials supersede everything else, including motions, so the YSL trial would take precedence over everything for defense attorneys, Former DeKalb County State Judge Dax Lopez said.
Lopez said judges are simply trying to get through backlogs as quickly as possible. He said the waiting can be particularly tough not only on victim’s families but also those facing charges.
“You’re sort of stuck there waiting for your case to be called and waiting years is a tough proposition. You need to move these cases,” Lopez said, adding that some defendants might not be able to get or pay bond, meaning they are stuck in jail — sometimes for years — without having been proven guilty.
Turner said she is happy to finally have some closure in her mother’s death, but it’s still a struggle on a daily basis, particularly the way the case was resolved. She just hopes other families impacted by the delays don’t have to go through years of pain like her family did.
“No family should have to experience this feeling of being ignored, neglected and then rushed through as if their loved one’s life was just an inconvenience to the legal system,” she said. “I’m happy to be on the other side, happy to have some kind of an answer, even if it took this long to get it.”
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