Rapper Young Thug accepts plea deal in Georgia RICO case
Written by ABC Audio ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on October 31, 2024
Atlanta Rapper Young Thug, whose legal name is Jeffrey Lamar Williams, has accepted a plea deal, changing his plea to guilty on gang-related charges in Fulton County, Georgia.
Williams pleaded guilty in court on Thursday afternoon.
“Is it your decision to waive these rights and enter a guilty plea because you are in fact guilty?” Superior Court of Fulton County Judge Paige Reese Whitaker asked.
“Yes,” Williams said before his attorney interjected on one of the counts.
The terms of the deal are unclear. 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 conspiring to violate the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and participating in criminal street gang activity, and was later charged with an additional count of participating in street gang activity, three counts of violating the Georgia controlled substances act, possession of a firearm while committing a felony and possession of a machine gun.
Before the plea deal was struck, Williams had pled not guilty and his attorney had repeatedly told ABC News that his client was innocent of all charges.
Throughout the racketeering trial, which began in Nov. 2023 and has been the longest-running trial in Georgia so far, 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 they moved like a pack with Jeffrey Williams as its head,” Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love alleged during opening statements.
Love claimed that the alleged members of YSL committed “criminal street gang activity — that is crimes that were intended to further the purpose and advance the directives of YSL itself.”
“For 10 years and counting, the group calling itself Young Slime Life dominated the Cleveland Avenue community of Fulton County,” Love said on Monday. “And created a crater in the middle of Fulton County’s Cleveland Avenue community, that sucked in the youth, the innocence and even the lives of some of his youngest members.”
The Grammy-winning rapper was charged in May 2022 in a sweeping RICO indictment in Fulton County, Georgia. He was among 28 individuals charged but stood trial with five co-defendants after many of those indicted took plea deals, while the judge ruled that others will be tried separately.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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