Editor’s Note: Since this story was posted, Fulton County Judge Shukura Ingram has recused herself from the YSL case citing the possibility of an appearance of a conflict of interest. Ingram’s former courtroom deputy was arrested due to an alleged romantic relationship with one of the case’s co-defendants.
The Fulton County judge assigned to take over the troubled Young Slime Life racketeering case is a former prosecutor who has spent six years on the bench.
Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram, an appointee of former Gov. Nathan Deal, won reelection in May after running unopposed. She was previously a Fulton prosecutor and assistant solicitor in Atlanta’s City Court, a senior associate at Georgia’s oldest Black-owned law firm and served three years as a Fulton magistrate judge.
Over the course of her legal career, the Clark Atlanta University and Georgia State graduate has been involved in a number of high-profile cases. In June, she ruled that a woman charged in an August 2022 Midtown shooting spree that resulted in the death of two men and the injuring of another was not competent to stand trial.
The judge said that the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, which will reevaluate Raissa Kengne’s mental capacity, must report its findings within 90 days about whether she can stand trial and if there is a substantial probability that she will “attain mental competency to stand trial in the foreseeable future.”
In 2022, Ingram presided over the sentencing of one of three defendants facing trial for the fatal 2016 shooting of aspiring rapper Jerome Blake at a southwest Atlanta recording studio. She sentenced Sheldon Dooley, who was found guilty of 14 counts including murder and felony murder, to two life sentences plus 45 years.
Like her colleagues on the Fulton Superior Court bench, Ingram already has a busy caseload. As of March, she had 189 pending criminal cases and 244 civil cases before her, according to court statistics.
Keith Adams, one of the attorneys representing Young Thug, said he’s known Ingram for many years and that he’s “very confident that she will be a good, unbiased, impartial fair judge.”
“I’ve never had any reason to question her impartially, her knowledge of the law. She’s a very conscientious, hard-working, jurist in the time that I’ve known her.”
Staff writer Jozsef Papp contributed to this article.
