In just her first term as Fulton County’s district attorney, Fani Willis brought two sensational racketeering cases that, for better or worse, will forever define her career as a prosecutor.
Last August, she secured an indictment of Donald Trump, accusing the former president of overseeing a criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
Willis had already obtained criminal charges in her other legacy-building case, the one that accused Young Slime Life of being a violent street gang. Prosecutors contended the head of YSL was Grammy Award-winning Jeffrey Williams, the rap and fashion icon known as Young Thug.
Willis’ bold and ambitious gambits thrust her into the national spotlight. But each of these massive — and massively important — prosecutions has gone off the rails this summer: the Trump case is in a state of legal limbo, while a cloud of uncertainty hovers over the now-delayed YSL trial.
Former Gwinnett DA Danny Porter lays the blame at the Fulton DA’s office. “Both of these cases are in the ditch either because of a direct action by the DA herself or by a direct action of somebody on her staff,” he said. “ ... Fani’s got to be feeling miserable.”
Willis and her allies say the developments are not a reflection of the DA’s leadership. Some have pointed to missteps by the judge who oversaw the 19-month-long YSL trial. He was removed from the case earlier this week. Others blame the rough-and-tumble nature of fiercely contested criminal prosecutions.
“I think what some people view as a hiccup is, for those of us that have practiced as prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys, just the process. You’re gonna have challenges,” said attorney Charlie Bailey, a friend and former colleague of Willis’ and whose wife works in the DA’s office.
In a statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Willis said her landslide victory in May’s Democratic primary shows that Fulton residents trust the DA’s office to protect their communities.
“I have upheld the oath to protect my constituents with every charging decision I have made,” she said. “I’ll reiterate, no one is above accountability and no one is beneath the protection of the law. As long as I am the District Attorney, charging decisions in every case handled by this office will be based on the facts and the law, regardless of race, religion, sex, socioeconomic status, political affiliation or any external sensationalism.”
Trouble in the Trump prosecution
The Trump case stalled because of Willis’ romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the outside lawyer she hired and paid more than $700,000 to serve as special prosecutor. High-profile defense lawyers seized upon the relationship to launch a months-long push to disqualify the DA and her office, arguing Willis had a conflict of interest.
They failed, but now slow-moving appellate judges have stepped in.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The state Court of Appeals did not have to take the pretrial appeal and could have allowed the case to go to trial. But in May it agreed to hear it and recently scheduled oral arguments for Dec. 5, one month after the November election. The appellate court has also halted most proceedings in the case.
Should it overturn the March ruling from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee allowing Willis to stay, the appeals court could take the Trump case entirely out of Willis’ hands.
It now appears all but certain the appeals court will issue its opinion early next year, possibly even after January’s inauguration. If Trump, who is the Republican nominee, is again elected president, legal experts are divided on whether Willis will be able to continue to prosecute him while he’s in office.
In-chambers hearing ‘was a bad idea’
The other sprawling case, the YSL trial, had already become the longest in Georgia’s history when Fulton prosecutors asked Judge Ural Glanville to convene an in-chambers court hearing with reluctant state’s witness Kenneth Copeland. Defense attorneys objected when they learned they had been excluded from the session and demanded Glanville recuse himself.
Glanville flatly denied the recusal motion. On Tuesday, Fulton Judge Rachel Krause found that, combined with his subsequent explanations of his actions, to be grounds for his removal from the case. He was replaced by fellow Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker.
During a status hearing on Friday, Whitaker signaled she intends to preside over the trial and move it forward, but she said she will first consider motions and hear arguments from the state and defense over the next two weeks. Looming over the case, though, is the possibility that defense attorneys could seek a mistrial based largely on the in-chambers hearing and Glanville’s subsequent actions. If such motions are filed and granted, the case would have to start all over again.
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
In her order, Krause said the in-chambers meeting “could have — and perhaps should have — taken place in open court” where defense counsel would have been present. She also said “nothing about the fact of the meeting or the substance discussed was inherently improper.”
Willis’ boosters saw the latter point as evidence that prosecutors did not err. But some outside observers disagree.
“I put this at the feet of the DA’s office,” Decatur defense attorney Bob Rubin said. “There’s absolutely no reason why the prosecutors couldn’t have insisted on the defense team, or a representative of the defense team, being present when they questioned Mr. Copeland. Any reasonable prosecutor would have done that. ... I don’t understand how they let this happen.”
“It was a bad idea,” agreed Porter, the former Gwinnett DA. “And if it was the prosecutor’s idea, to me, that almost makes it worse.”
‘Losing an entire generation’
Willis remains highly popular in Fulton. She cruised to victory in May’s Democratic primary with 87% of the vote. She faces Courtney Kramer, a little-known Republican lawyer who once worked for Trump and helped the Georgia GOP challenge election results, in November.
During the primary, Willis cited declining violent crime numbers in Atlanta as evidence that her prosecutorial approach was working, especially with respect to gangs. The DA’s office also points to other successes which have received less attention.
The Fulton DA’s gang unit secured 169 convictions in 2023, according to office statistics, and 76 so far in 2024. That’s in addition to the convictions of Rayshawn Bennett, the rapper known as YFN Lucci, and his associates. The DA’s office said YFN is a rival gang of YSL and that both have wreaked havoc around the city.
“If we don’t stop this, we are in the process of losing an entire generation,” Willis said of gangs more broadly in 2022. “We are just getting to the point where people admit that here in Fulton County, we have a gang problem.”
The DA’s office has pointed to cases such as Jayden Myrick’s as an example of that gang problem’s toll. Myrick, a YSL co-defendant whose case was severed from the Young Thug trial, said he was groomed by older gang members starting when he was 9 or 10. He is currently serving a life sentence without parole for the July 2018 robbery and fatal shooting of a wedding guest outside of a country club.
Tanya Miller, a former Fulton prosecutor, defends Willis’ performance so far. She said the focus should be on what Willis is trying to achieve in the YSL and Trump cases.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
“In one case, we’re talking about murder, mayhem, robberies and everything under the sun — shootings, aggravated assault, you name it,” said Miller, now a defense lawyer and Democratic state legislator. “And the other hand, we’re talking about people at the highest levels of government allegedly engaging in corrupt behavior to steal democracy. To me, personally, she is doing what the citizens of Fulton County elected her to do.”
Others see the status of the YSL case in particular as the downside to Willis’ embrace of Georgia’s RICO statute and pursuit of large, multi-defendant cases.
“One of the big judgment questions is how did a trial process ever take so long when other jurisdictions would have been more efficient in organizing a trial of this size and complexity,” said Roswell attorney Joshua Schiffer. “Large trials and large prosecutions are common. The defense’s ability to slow down, stymie, stop the prosecution of the state shows how good those criminal defense attorneys are — and reflects on the prosecutor who brought us to this juncture.”
University of Georgia law professor Melissa Redmon said it’s too soon to say whether RICO was the right approach in either the election or YSL cases. But based on the alleged criminal conduct, prosecutors’ use of the statute makes sense, she said.
“As crime evolves, and as the way people commit crimes evolves, I think prosecutors have to adapt accordingly,” said Redmon, who worked in the Fulton DA’s office. “And I think that may be in ways that people don’t like, especially if it’s successful.”
Former DeKalb DA Robert James said the delays of the two nationally watched cases are regrettable.
“The optics of it aren’t great,” but, at the same time, the two cases “haven’t completely blown up,” he said.
When asked how he’d feel if he were in Willis’ shoes, James said, “I’d be frustrated. I’d be irritated. I’d be exacerbated. But ultimately, this is the battle that you started. ... You have no choice but to see it through. Backing down is not an option. Surrender is not an option.”
