If Young Thug hadn’t pleaded guilty to gang, drug and gun charges on Halloween night, the rap superstar might have walked free, two jurors said after the lengthy trial ended this week.
The trial, the longest in Georgia history, concluded Tuesday as the two remaining defendants were acquitted of murder, gang and racketeering charges. The jury found Deamonte Kendrick not guilty of all the charges he faced, while Shannon Stillwell was convicted of one count of possessing a gun as a felon and sentenced to probation.
The single guilty verdict was a blow to Fulton County prosecutors, who spent more than a year arguing “Young Slime Life” was a violent gang led by the Grammy-winning rapper. YSL, they contended, was responsible for a series of robberies, shootings and the deaths of three rival gang members.
In a press conference announcing the indictment in May 2022, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she would seek the maximum penalties for the 28 defendants charged, alleging gangs are responsible for “75 to 80% of all of the violent crime” in Fulton County.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
But two jurors said Tuesday that the state failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, particularly when it came to the evidence against Young Thug. The Atlanta rapper, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, was sentenced to 15 years of probation and banished from his hometown for a decade after pleading guilty.
“From my perspective, I think he had a great shot of going home,” Juror No. 71 said in a phone interview. “A lot of time, we sat there waiting on that smoking gun. At that point, there wasn’t a smoking gun.”
Juror No. 71 said he doesn’t know if prosecutors had additional evidence to present against Williams. But at the time Young Thug pleaded guilty, there wasn’t enough for a conviction, he said. Citing concerns for his safety, the juror, whose first name is Kevin, asked not to be fully identified. Other jurors declined to be interviewed after they were released from jury duty.
Jury foreman Jason Collins told Channel 2 Action News he didn’t feel the state had presented enough evidence to convict the rapper, either.
“From what I was looking at, I did not see anything connected to him throughout the course of the case,” he said.
Some jurors have taken to social media after being dismissed from the trial, including three who say they want to collaborate online with the state’s star witness, Kenneth Copeland.
The trio launched TikTok and YouTube accounts after being dismissed from jury duty, and spoke to Melanie Goolsby, a content creator who has been following the case, about their experience on the jury.
The jurors didn’t reveal their names, and only two of them appeared on camera while a third remained out of view. They couldn’t be reached for comment on Wednesday.
During their live social media interview Tuesday night, juror No. 225 told Goolsby that the state’s evidence against the rapper didn’t shine a negative light on him, like the state intended it to.
“I saw somebody who kind of pulled himself up, got himself out of the position he was in and help other people around. It actually shined a more positive light in my eyes than what the state was trying to present,” she said.
Jury selection started in January 2023 and lasted 10 months. The trial itself took more than a year and was marred by repeated delays and the replacement of the judge midway through.
In the end, the jury was ready to go home.
“It was extremely long,” Collins told Channel 2. “You pretty much put your whole life on the side.”
Credit: File photos
Credit: File photos
Prosecutors argued at trial that YSL members regularly rapped about crimes they had committed. Kevin said he wasn’t swayed by the state’s use of lyrics as evidence. He grew up in Chicago and said plenty of people rap about violence.
“If that’s the case, come lock up my nephews and my cousins’ kids. Come lock up my whole neighborhood,” he said.
Kevin also said he thought the state’s evidence was lacking when it came to the shooting deaths of Donovan Thomas and Shymel Drinks.
For one thing, the juror said, he felt the witness who placed Stillwell and Kendrick at the scene of Thomas’ shooting was unreliable, especially after that witness, Copeland, admitted he had lied to investigators to keep himself out of trouble.
“Everything to me was a torn up picture they were trying to tape back together,” he said of the state’s case. “You try to make it whole, but you are missing some pieces.”
The 26-year-old Thomas was gunned down outside an Atlanta barbershop, and prosecutors argued the car used in the drive-by had been rented by Young Thug. But Kevin said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to convict the two defendants of murder.
”(Copeland) placed them there and then the state didn’t back it up with the phone records,” he said. “They had everybody else’s phone records except for Kendrick and Stillwell.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Regarding the fatal shooting of Drinks at a red light in March 2022, Kevin said the grainy surveillance video presented by the prosecution wasn’t enough to find Stillwell guilty of murder either.
“We never saw the shots. We never saw the flashes,” he said.
Kevin described serving on the jury as a nice change of pace from his regular job, where he clocks plenty of overtime hours each week. There were enough breaks in proceedings that he could schedule doctor appointments, but he said he couldn’t travel back and forth to Illinois to visit his relatives.
Jury service wasn’t as easy for others, Kevin acknowledged, saying some jurors essentially put their lives on hold to attend trial each day.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys met with the jury after the verdict was delivered Tuesday morning. But Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love wasn’t there, Kevin said.
The juror said he thought the lead prosecutor took things personally at times during the trial, especially during closing arguments.
Kevin said he may keep in touch with some of the other jurors, but acknowledged that they’re from different walks of life.
“I can see a few of us getting together a year down the line, six months down the line in the summertime,” Kevin said.
