YSL RICO Trial: Jury deliberations to begin Tuesday for remaining defendants
FULTON COUNTY, Ga. - The longest running criminal trial in Georgia history will soon be in the hands of the men and women of the jury.
Nearly a year since the beginning of the YSL RICO Trial, the number of defendants has dwindled down to two: Shannon Stillwell and Deamonte Kendrick, who raps as Yak Gotti. After closing arguments on Monday, the jury will now decide whether the two men will be found guilty on gang, murder, drug and gun charges.
The original indictment charged 28 people with conspiring to violate Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Four of them, including Young Thug, pleaded guilty last month. Stillwell and Kendrick rejected plea deals after weeks of negotiations, and their lawyers chose not to present evidence or witnesses.
Jurors are expected to begin deliberations Tuesday morning. If they do not reach a verdict by the end of Wednesday, they will return after Thanksgiving.
YSL RICO Trial: The prosecution's closing argument
On Monday, prosecutors boiled down the last 12 months into just a matter of hours. The state argued that Kendrick and Stillwell were part of a vast conspiracy that included a lot of violence.
"Over and over and over, they show you they have guns, and we’re not afraid to use them," Adkins said. "Believe them. The evidence has shown it."
The state talked about the law, went through evidence, like surveillance videos and social media posts. They say all of it shows YSL members like Kendrick and Stillwell committed crimes on half of the street gang co-founded by Young Thug.
Kendrick and Stillwell were charged in the 2015 killing of Donovan Thomas Jr., also known as "Big Nut," in an Atlanta barbershop. Prosecutors say Thomas was in a rival gang. Stillwell was also charged with the 2022 murder of Shymel Drinks in retaliation for the murders of two YSL associates days earlier, prosecutors said.
"If someone murders a rival gang member twice, I think it’s pretty clear they knowingly and willfully agreed to whether they signed on the dotted line," Adkins said.
Adkins described YSL as a violent gang that operated through "deception, intimidation, destruction and death."
He pointed to social media posts in which he said showed members admittedly killed people in rival gangs and said their clothes and tattoos were "walking billboards" for YSL.
YSL RICO Trial: The defense's closing argument
The attorneys for Stillwell and Kendrick said the state slapped together cherry-picked social media posts and song lyrics with unreliable witness testimony to paint a misleading narrative about young men from tough upbringings who tried to escape poverty through music.
Doug Weinstein, Kendrick’s defense attorney, and Stillwell’s defense attorney, Max Schardt, said prosecutors threw a bunch of separate alleged crimes, many from around a decade ago, into an indictment without showing that they were connected to a criminal enterprise.
"The state has spent the past year with a hammer in their hand banging on a square peg that they call evidence," Schardt said.
But "that square peg does not fit in that round hole," he said.
Alleged YSL affiliates said during the trial they lied to police to avoid long prison sentences. Schardt theorized one of those witnesses killed Thomas. He framed Stillwell, Kendrick and others as a part of his string of lies to avoid the threat of prison, Schardt said.
Before he got "sucked up in this targeting of Jeffery Williams," Weinstein said Kendrick was focused on the rap career that helped him move on from his troubled past after plans to play football at the University of Georgia fell through.
His client wasn’t even in the car used in the drive-by shooting that killed Thomas, Weinstein said. But prosecutors said Kendrick was the one who alerted his counterparts about Thomas’ whereabouts before he was murdered.
"Looking at the evidence presented to you and any review of that evidence would have you come back with findings of not guilty," Weinstein said.
Previous YSL RICO plea deals and conflicts
The case against Young Thug, the 33-year-old Atlanta-born Grammy winning artist whose given name is Jeffery Williams, and dozens of others has seen twists and turns and major judge shakeups for the last two years.
Williams pleaded guilty to gang, drug and gun charges in October after negotiations with prosecutors broke down. That left the sentence up to Whitaker, who gave him a 40-year sentence that let him walk free on probation with hefty restrictions, including a ban from the metro Atlanta area for the first 10 years except for certain occasions.
The slow-moving trial has been fraught with problems from the start. Jury selection took nearly 10 months, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville, the original judge, was removed from the case in July after defense attorneys filed a recusal motion based on a secretive meeting he held with prosecutors and a state witness.
Whitaker took over the case and often lost patience with prosecutors for what she once called "poor lawyering." She and defense attorneys scolded prosecutors for not sharing evidence in advance.
More than 175 witnesses testified throughout the trial. Prosecutors alleged that Young Thug and two others co-founded a violent criminal street gang in 2012 called Young Slime Life, or YSL, which they say is affiliated with the national Bloods gang.
At Young Thug’s plea hearing, defense attorney Brian Steel said that Young Thug was "falsely accused" and the evidence against him was weak. He also condemned the use of rap lyrics during the trial.
Steel said he thought they were winning the trial and wanted to stick it out to a jury verdict, but Young Thug wanted to go home to his family instead of sitting through the rest of the trial, which felt like "hell."
Nine people charged in the indictment, including Atlanta rapper Gunna, whose real name is Sergio Kitchens, accepted plea deals before the trial began. Twelve others are to be tried separately. Prosecutors dropped charges against one defendant after he was convicted of murder in an unrelated case.