{"id":1332,"date":"2024-06-13T00:56:47","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T00:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thugs-lawyer-avoids-jail-after-georgia-supreme-court-hits-pause\/"},"modified":"2024-06-13T00:56:47","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T00:56:47","slug":"young-thugs-lawyer-avoids-jail-after-georgia-supreme-court-hits-pause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thugs-lawyer-avoids-jail-after-georgia-supreme-court-hits-pause\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Thug’s Lawyer Avoids Jail After Georgia Supreme Court Hits Pause"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tYoung Thug\u2019s attorney Brian Steel <\/strong>will not have to report to jail this weekend on criminal contempt charges after the Georgia Supreme Court granted his emergency motion for bond.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling, issued Wednesday (June 12), came two days after the Atlanta judge overseeing Young Thug\u2019s gang trial held Steel in criminal contempt in a bizarre courtroom episode centered on claims of a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe decision means that Steel\u2019s jail sentence \u2014 20 days, to be served over ten consecutive weekends starting this Friday \u2014 will be put on pause until the Supreme Court rules on his appeal of the contempt order, which his attorneys have argued was an abuse of the judge\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n

\n\tAn attorney for Steel did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Monday (June 10), months into the massive racketeering trial, Steel alerted Judge Ural Glanville<\/strong> that he had learned of a secret \u201cex parte\u201d meeting that morning between the judge, prosecutors and a witness named Kenneth Copeland. Steel argued that such a meeting, without defense counsel present, had potentially involved coercion of a witness and was clear grounds for a mistrial.<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than address Steel\u2019s complaints, Glanville instead repeatedly demanded that he divulge who had informed him about a private meeting in his chambers, suggesting the leak was illegal: \u201cIf you don\u2019t tell me how you got this information, you and I are going to have problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSteel refused to do so, saying that it had been the meeting itself that was the problem. \u201cYou\u2019re not supposed to have communication with a witness who\u2019s been sworn,\u201d he told the judge. Steel said he had been told that during the meeting, prosecutors and the judge had pressed Copeland to testify by saying he could be held in jail for an extended period of time if he did not do so.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf that\u2019s true, what this is is coercion, witness intimidation,\u201d Steel told Glanville.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an extraordinary exchange, the two continued to argue until Glanville eventually ordered Steel removed from the courtroom by a court officer. In an order issued later on Monday \u2014 with Steel now represented by another well-known Georgia criminal defense attorney \u2014Glanville ultimately sentenced Steel to spend 20 days in jail, to be served over 10 consecutive weekends.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a dramatic twist, Steel requested that he be allowed to serve that sentence alongside Young Thug, who has been sitting in jail for more than two years as the trial drags on.<\/p>\n

\n\tThug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his \u201cYSL\u201d group was not really a record label called \u201cYoung Stoner Life\u201d but a violent Atlanta gang called \u201cYoung Slime Life.\u201d Prosecutors claim the group committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.<\/p>\n

\n\tJury selection kicked off in January 2023, but the trial itself did not begin until November and has since been marked by numerous delays. With dozens of witnesses still set to testify in the prosecution case, the trial is expected to run into 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing Glanville\u2019s contempt ruling against Steel, his attorneys immediately appealed the decision, arguing that the judge\u2019s actions on Monday had been both procedurally and substantively improper. Among other things, they cited the fact that Glanville himself had issued a ruling on an issue that involved his own potentially unethical actions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe court involved itself in these proceedings by conducting the ex parte hearing that violated Mr. Steel\u2019s client\u2019s rights,\u201d Steel\u2019s attorney wrote in their appeal. \u201cThis created a conflict of interest for the court because its own ethical conduct was at the heart of Mr. Steel\u2019s request.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe court then compounded its abuse of power by presiding over the very contempt hearing where its own rules violations prompted the controversy,\u201d Steel\u2019s attorneys continued. \u201cThe court should have recused and allowed the contempt proceedings to be handled by a separate court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat appeal, filed with a state appeals court on Tuesday (June 11), was passed along to the Supreme Court, which under Georgia case law is tasked with handling such appeals directly. And on Wednesday, the high court accepted the case and ordered Steel\u2019s sentence put on hold until it issues a final ruling on Judge Glanville\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing Monday\u2019s dust-up, the YSL trial has continued with more testimony, with Steel present in the courtroom representing Thug. But on Wednesday, attorneys for another defendant (Deamonte Kendrick) argued that Glanville should recuse himself from the case over the alleged secret meeting with prosecutors and the witness. They argued that the meeting had been intended to \u201charass and intimidate the sworn witness into testifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen presented with that motion in court, Glanville quickly denied it and continued on with the trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young Thug\u2019s attorney Brian Steel will not have to report to jail this weekend on criminal contempt charges after the Georgia Supreme Court granted his emergency motion for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[267,143,484,1887,1572,107,1888,533,1886,1094],"class_list":["post-1332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-avoids","tag-court","tag-georgia","tag-hits","tag-jail","tag-lawyer","tag-pause","tag-supreme","tag-thugs","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}