Rapper Young Thug sentenced to 15 years probation in Georgia RICO case

Atlanta Rapper Young Thug, whose legal name is Jeffrey Lamar Williams, has accepted a plea deal and changed his plea to guilty on gang-related charges in Fulton County, Georgia.

Williams pleaded guilty in court Thursday afternoon.

He was sentenced to prison and probation for 15 years and is expected to be released under house arrest on Thursday.

“Is it your decision to waive these rights and enter a plea of ​​guilty because you are actually guilty?” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker asked.

“Yes,” Williams said before his lawyer intervened on one of the points.

According to an ABC affiliate in Atlanta, WSB TVwho was in court Thursday, the rapper’s plea deal was not negotiated, meaning the final sentencing decision will be up to the judge.

He pleaded no contest to two charges, including violation of the RICO law, which is a plea of ​​no contest or no defense, meaning the defendant neither admits nor denies the charges against them, WSB-TV reported.

ABC News has reached out to Williams’ attorney Brian Steel for additional comment.

Williams was initially charged on May 10, 2022, with one count each of conspiracy to violate the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and participating in criminal street gang activity, and was later charged with an additional count of participating in street gang activity . activity, three counts of violation of Georgia’s Controlled Substances Act, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and possession of a machine gun.

Before the plea deal was reached, Williams had pleaded not guilty and his attorney had repeatedly told ABC News that his client was innocent of all charges.

During the racketeering trial, which began in November 2023 and was the longest-running trial in Georgia to date, prosecutors alleged that the Grammy-winning rapper is a co-founder and “proclaimed leader” of an alleged criminal street gang in Fulton County. , Georgia, known as “Young Slime Life” or “YSL.”

“The members and associates of YSL moved as a pack with Jeffrey Williams at their head,” Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love alleged during opening statements.

Love alleged that YSL’s alleged members had committed “criminal street gang activity – that is, crimes intended to further the cause and further the guidelines of YSL itself.”

“For a decade, the group calling itself Young Slime Life has dominated the Cleveland Avenue community of Fulton County,” Love said Monday. “And he created a crater in the middle of the Cleveland Avenue community in Fulton County, sucking in the youth, the innocence, and even the lives of some of its youngest members.”

The Grammy-winning rapper was charged in a sweeping RICO indictment in May 2022 in Fulton County, Georgia. He was one of 28 charged, but stood trial along with five co-defendants after many of the defendants took plea deals, while the judge ruled that others will be tried separately.

The rapper’s star power drew national attention to this case and the prosecutor’s controversial use of his lyrics, as well as the lyrics performed by some of his defendants, as alleged evidence in this case further thrust the case into the national spotlight.

The use of lyrics sparked outrage among free speech advocates and prominent musicians and producers in the hip-hop world, who argued that rap music and the writing process are a form of artistic expression and not necessarily a reflection of reality.

Prosecutors argued in the indictment that social media posts, images and various song lyrics released by several defendants, including Young Thug, are “overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy” to violate the RICO Act.

Although the scope of the suit went well beyond the use of rap lyrics, the inclusion of lyrics sparked outrage among artists across the music industry and helped spark a movement that became known as “Protect Black Art.”

Steel filed a motion in December 2022 asking Judge Ural Glanville, who was removed from the case after meeting with a witness and prosecutors, to prevent prosecutors from using song lyrics as evidence.

Steel argued that “(Lyrics) cannot be used as evidence of crime if they are simply related to music/free speech/free speech/poetry.”

Glanville denied the motion in a November 2022 ruling, ruling that 17 strings of texts mentioned in the indictment could be preliminarily admitted into the trial.

“I conditionally admit the pending texts subject to — or conditional on a foundation properly laid by the state or the proponent seeking to admit that evidence,” Glanville said.

The judge added that if prosecutors plan to include additional texts as part of the alleged evidence in this case, they could be submitted to the judge for review.