Six weeks after Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug pleaded out of his gang and racketeering conspiracy case in Atlanta, his two remaining co-defendants were acquitted of murder charges Tuesday, ending the longest-running criminal trial in Georgia state history.
Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick was found not guilty of all six charges he was facing. Shannon Stillwell was convicted of one gun charge and found not guilty of his six remaining charges. Kendrick hung his head and made the sign of the cross as his lawyer, Doug Weinstein, embraced him. Stillwell turned and hugged his lawyer, Max Schardt.
Both men had been charged with the deadly drive-by shooting of Donovan Thomas Jr. outside a barber shop on Jan. 10, 2015. Stillwell was further charged with the March 14, 2022 shooting death of Shymel Drinks.
The jury, consisting of eight women and four men, started hearing evidence in November 2023 following a 10-month jury selection process. They were handed the case to begin deliberations the Monday before Thanksgiving.
The sprawling and controversial trial kicked off with six defendants and a more than 730 names on the state’s proposed list of witnesses. In her opening statement, Fulton County Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love claimed YSL was a criminal street gang that “dominated” South Atlanta with drug sales, armed robberies, assaults and three murders.
Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, initially pleaded not guilty and vigorously denied being the kingpin of a violent gang that created a “crater” in the Cleveland Avenue community where he grew up. The trial meandered for months but then burst into global headlines with the dramatic on-camera arrest of Williams’ defense lawyer Brian Steel on a contempt charge that was later dropped and the involuntary recusal of Fulton County Chief Judge Ural Glanville over his handling of a secret meeting with a key witness.
Another dramatic turn came in late October when Williams and three co-defendants pleaded out of the case with sentences many considered highly favorable considering the potential maximums they were facing. The wave of guilty pleas followed after prosecutors led a witness to testify to something off-limits, and Judge Paige Reese Whitaker made it clear she was on the verge of declaring a mistrial.
While his three co-defendants reached negotiated deals with prosecutors, Williams took the extraordinary step of entering his pleas without a deal in place, meaning his fate was in the hands of Judge Whitaker, with prosecutors pressing for prison time. Williams, 33, pleaded “no contest” to his top charges of racketeering conspiracy and participation in a criminal street gang in a leadership role. He then pleaded guilty to three drug charges, two gun charges, and one lesser gang charge. Fulton County Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love asked the court to forbid the “no contest” pleas, but Judge Whitaker allowed them.
After spending more than two years in jail awaiting the outcome of his trial, Williams was sentenced on the spot to 15 years of probation and released. If he violates probation, he’ll get a “backloaded” sentence of 20 years, the judge said.
Much of the evidence in the sprawling trial consisted of social media posts, song lyrics and police interviews with Kenneth “Woody” Copeland, a man who repeatedly called himself a habitual liar while testifying under an immunity deal. In his address to the court before Williams was sentenced, Steel called the use of music lyrics “offensive.” In his opening, Steel said Copeland likely killed Thomas.
Prosecutors built much of their case around the theory that Thomas was the leader of a rival gang called Inglewood Family. They said Thomas was gunned down amid a bitter feud with Williams that largely centered on Rich Homie Quan, the late Atlanta rapper born Dequantes Lamar. According to prosecutors, Williams was trying to get Lamar to leave the Thomas-affiliated label Think It’s A Game Records and join Cash Money Records, a label run by Williams’ manager at the time, Bryan “Birdman” Williams.
According to prosecutors, Kendrick is the one who spotted Thomas outside the barber shop and alerted others. They say Kendrick later climbed into a rented Infinity with Stillwell and two other men, returned to the barber shop and opened fire. In his closing, Stillwell’s lawyer, Schardt, said prosecutors failed to prove their case. He said Copeland admitted on a recorded jail call and again on the witness stand that he was bluffing when he told police in June 2015 that he’d heard Young Thug met his co-defendants at the gas station to give them his rented Infinity for the drive-by shooting.
Steel said repeatedly during the trial that Williams was friends with Thomas and grieved his death. He said Williams and Thomas were “very close,’ with the men hanging out together on Birdman’s tour bus in the weeks before the shooting. He told jurors Copeland had the real motive for shooting Thomas because he admittedly feared Thomas after being accused of stealing items from Thomas’ vehicle. (Copeland was charged with Thomas’ murder at one point, but prosecutors later switched course and charged the murder in the RICO indictment. Williams was never directly charged with murder.)
According to prosecutors, Thomas also was an ally of Rayshawn “YFN Lucci” Bennett, another rapper who allegedly feuded with Williams. Prosecutors said the rivalry between YSL and Inglewood Family exploded into a full-blown war after Thomas’ murder, and that Drinks’ death was a consequence of the ongoing conflict. For his part, Steel previously told the court that Williams “did nothing” to Bennett and that the men appeared on a red carpet together and sat next to each other at a California awards show during the time prosecutors claim they were mortal enemies.
In his closing argument delivered Nov. 25, Kendrick’s lawyer Weinstein also said prosecutors failed to meet their burden. He scoffed at prosecutors’ claim that YSL was a “hybrid gang” consisting of “Bloods and Crips and independents,” and that alleged YSL members signified their affiliation by wearing green. In a moment that went viral, Weinstein pointed out that Adriane Love and her co-prosecutor Simone Hylton appeared to be wearing matching red blazers as he addressed the jury. “Are they a gang because they’re all dressed in red?” he asked. “It is absurd.”
In her final words to the panel before deliberations started, Deputy District Attorney Hylton thanked the jurors for their “sacrifice,” saying she was aware the record-breaking trial took them away from their lives and families. She then shot back at the claim her office was “targeting” Black men with a flimsy case.
“I am a person of color. The majority of this prosecution team are people of color,” she said. “The victims in this case, most of them are people of color.”
Prosecutors initially charged 28 defendants when they unveiled their RICO indictment in May 2022. Nine co-defendants, including famed rapper Sergio “Gunna” Kitchens, accepted plea deals before Williams’ trial started. A dozen other co-defendants had their cases severed for various reasons. The charges against a final co-defendant were dropped when he was convicted of an unrelated murder.
