One wonders how much jurors can take.
A sense of juror frustration surfaced in Fulton County court on Tuesday. But let me roll back a day to say how we got there in the saga known as The Longest Trial Ever in Georgia History.
After almost a year of being forced to spend their days confined to a courtroom with an internationally famous rapper, jurors walked into court Monday to find that Young Thug — and several of his co-defendants — had vanished.
Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, accused of being the leader of a vicious street gang, pleaded guilty last week in the jury’s absence to a host of charges. He is now out of the slammer on probation, probably plotting his triumphant comeback.
After 12 days away from court, the jury arrived Monday to see a much less congested courtroom. Four banquet tables where defense attorneys had previously sat with their clients were now vacant. The back of the courtroom now resembled a quiet cafeteria after the lunch rush.
Judge Paige Reese Whitaker instructed the jurors to pay no attention to the missing celebrity and his alleged minions.
“You will notice that certain of the co-defendants are no longer before you for reasons that do not concern you,” Whitaker told jurors. “The prosecution of those co-defendants is no longer a part of this trial. You must not speculate, make assumptions or draw any conclusions about the possible reasons for their absence.”
Good luck with that.
Miguel Martinez
Miguel Martinez
Before the jury was brought in, defense attorneys argued an Atlanta police detective, who had testified previously, should not be allowed to return to the stand.
Whitaker, who has often expressed frustration with how prosecutors are waging their case, noted they were pulling an “end run” by bringing him back.
Defense attorney Max Schardt, who represents Shannon Stillwell, one of the two remaining defendants, said having the detective return to testify was “strategic” on the prosecution’s part.
The judge laughed, adding: “I think you’re giving them too much credit.”
The cop did not testify.
Wunnie Lee, a middling level rapper known as SlimeLife Shawty, then returned to the witness chair where he was sitting on Oct. 23 when testimony went into hiatus.
(Jurors, who have been empaneled since last November, are used to the herky jerk. They were sent off to an unplanned two-month “summer vacation” when the former judge, Ural Glanville, was removed and replaced by Whitaker.)
As jurors settled in to listen to SlimeLife Shawty expound on the rap game, prosecutors and defense attorneys paused the proceedings to huddle at the judge’s bench to discuss some point of the law.
After minutes of hushed conversation, an apologetic judge turned to the jury, saying, “I hate to say after you’ve been gone a week ‘We need a minute.’ But we need a minute.”
Again, jurors shuffled out to idle away some more of their lives.
Shawty came back to discuss some videos he and others made. Prosecutors argue that members of YSL (prosecutors call it a gang; defense attorneys say it’s merely a record label) brag about their criminal life in rap verse.
TNS
TNS
Prosecutors allege Shawty bragged in a video about YSL members spraying graffiti on the gravestone of a rival gang leader, Donovan Thomas, who was murdered in 2015.
Shawty noted that lots of his music is fiction and that rappers like to pick feuds with others to pump up their reputation and draw attention. It’s like the mean streets’ P.R.
Monday’s testimony also included a medical examiner describing the headshot that killed a 15-year-old who was killed by another 15-year-old in 2019. Attorneys for the two remaining defendants, Stillwell and Deamonte Kendrick, also known as Yak Gotti, argue the murder has nothing to do with their clients. But this is a RICO case, so all sorts of evidence can slide in.
After Shawty’s testimony, an Atlanta cop sat on the stand and opened a heavily taped evidence package filled with guns, drugs and jewelry found at a raid of Young Thug’s house in 2022.
Doug Weinstein, attorney for Yak Gotti, who was at the home that day, called the place a “party house.” Albeit a well-armed one.
It was the first time that the contents of the raid were presented in court, coincidentally on the first day of testimony after Young Thug was cut loose from trial.
Monday’s proceedings caused at least one juror to slow boil. I get it. Trials are often so agonizingly boring they can bring out the primal scream in even the most patient human.
On Tuesday, a juror wrote a note to Judge Whitaker asking to be removed from the case, citing the “length of this trial and how the state has handled this case.”
The juror noted he “could no longer be unbiased” and said that “yesterday provided a glimpse of how the state presented its evidence and I foresee another three to six months with the remaining defendants.”
The judge and all attorneys agreed the slimmed-down case should move more quickly and might be done before Santa Claus loads his sleigh. The juror was brought into court and told this and seemed to be less frustrated afterward.
The judge, a former prosecutor, did pass on an observation to prosecutors. “Frankly,” she told them, “if you’re presenting the case in a way that is driving a juror crazy, that’s on you.”
And so it slogs on.
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