After jury selection took most of the year, the high-profile trial of rapper Young Thug and five codefendants started in earnest Monday.
“Sit back, enjoy the show, get some popcorn,” said Angela D’Williams, who represents Rodalius Ryan. “Because this is not justice, this is a circus.”
Here are some of the week’s highlights:
What “Thug” really means: The attorney for Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, told the jury his client’s stage moniker stands for “Truly Humbled Under God.”
“Thug meant and means to Jeffery something very personal,” Brian Steel said in his opening statements. “It was his pact if he could ever make it as a musical artist and help his family, himself and ... others out of this endless cycle of hopelessness, he would be Truly Humbled Under God. That’s what Thug means.”
Steel also referenced the 2022 hit “pushin P” by Gunna and Future, which featured his client. He said the “P” referred to on the track stands for positivity.
“It’s called “pushin P” and it’s positivity. It means any circumstance you are in, if you think positively about something, you can make it through,” Steel said. “You are pushing positivity, you are pushing P.”
Jury hears a poem from 1895: Prosecutor Adriane Love began her opening statements by reciting a poem from Rudyard Kipling’s sequel “The Second Jungle Book.”
Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Young Thug, she said, is the leader of the pack.
Speaking of artistic allusions: D’Williams referenced the long-running Japanese anime “Bleach” in her opening statement.
D’Williams said there were characters known as “Bounts” in the show’s fourth and fifth seasons, but that those characters are not mentioned at all in seasons six and seven.
“Why don’t you hear about these important characters? Because they are filler characters, it’s a filler season,” D’Williams told the jury. “Me and Rodalius, we are fillers, we are not integral to the story.”
Ryan is already serving a life sentence for the 2019 murder of 15-year-old Jamari Holmes. The teen’s slaying is included in the indictment as an overt act, but Ryan only faces one count of conspiring to violate the state’s RICO law.
D’Williams contended her client is a “distraction,” just filler for prosecutors to build out their sprawling gang case.
“Why are me and Rodalius here? Because the state wants to put on a show,” she said. “Rodalius is in less than 1% of this whole indictment.”
D’Williams, followers of the trial may recall, made news earlier this year with her vivid complaints over the paltry $15,000 fee she and other public defenders were set to earn. She received a bump in pay and a monthly stipend from the Georgia Public Defender Council after musing she was thinking of starting an OnlyFans account to supplement her pay.
Steve Schaefer
Steve Schaefer
Speaking of being on camera: Proceedings were delayed about an hour Wednesday after a broadcast camera inadvertently showed the faces of some of the jurors sitting in the front row. Chief Judge Ural Glanville continued with proceedings, but asked that reporters not film the Atlanta police detective during the remainder of his testimony.
The one courtroom figure everyone loves: Before openings began, Glanville introduced the jury to his service dog, Jack.
Glanville is an Army veteran and Jack helps to manage his PTSD.
“He lives the best life ever. He is pampered,” Glanville said. “Don’t bring him any food either, he is spoiled rotten.”
