Young Thug fans staged a protest outside Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, alleging recent courtroom actions in the YSL RICO trial grounds for a mistrial. Reports indicate, that the Friday morning (October 25) protest was scheduled by supporters who claimed that “recent events during [court] proceedings have raised questions about the integrity of the trial.” The protest made headlines just two days after Judge Paige Whitaker—the case’s third judge—cleared the jury from the courtroom due to a misstep in Slimelife Shawty’s testimony, a slip that now jeopardizes the state’s case.
On October 23, Wunnie Lee took the stand to identify members of Thug’s YSL crew connected to the case. Rather than reading the redacted excerpts shown in court, he surprisingly read an unfiltered post that featured the hashtag “#FreeQua.” The blunder prompted the defense to request a mistrial, given that jurors shouldn’t be privy to prior incarceration histories of Thug’s co-defendants. After dismissing both Slimelife Shawty and the jurors, Whitaker took to prosecution to task for a series of missteps throughout the trial.
She stated, “What I’m trying to do is fix your sloppiness.” “So that everybody won’t have wasted ten, 12 months of their lives in this trial.” Whitaker subsequently halted the trial for two days, granting defense attorneys time to engage in negotiations with prosecutors; the specifics of their discussions remain unclear.
Protest Leader Questions Fairness of Ongoing RICO Trial
In an interview with Fox5 Atlanta, protest leader Ten Wilkerson reflected on Judge Whitaker’s apprehensions while detailing the motivation behind the rally. He voiced, “My message is at what point do we say this is unfair?” “What point does the justice system say we got it wrong? We either need to rethink what we’re doing and do the mistrial or dismiss the trial – and when I say try again, I don’t mean try again with the case.”
With November 2023 marking its inception, Young Thug’s RICO trial has become Georgia’s longest running courtroom saga, now nearing the one-year milestone.
Leave a Reply