{"id":6384,"date":"2025-06-09T18:32:02","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T18:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thug-ysl-rico-case-ends-after-last-guilty-plea\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T18:32:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T18:32:02","slug":"young-thug-ysl-rico-case-ends-after-last-guilty-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thug-ysl-rico-case-ends-after-last-guilty-plea\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Thug YSL RICO Case Ends After Last Guilty Plea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tM<\/span>ore than three years after Young Thug, Gunna and dozens of others were indicted in Atlanta on gang charges, Thug\u2019s last co-defendant has pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n

\n\tA trial had been set to start Monday (June 9) in Fulton County court for Christian Eppinger, who stood accused of attempted murder for allegedly shooting an Atlanta police officer in 2022. But he instead entered a so-called Alford plea, allowing him to technically plead guilty while maintaining that he is innocent; he was later sentenced to 40 years in prison.<\/p>\n

\n\tEppinger was the last remaining defendant of 28 men indicted in May 2022 by Fulton County prosecutors, who claimed that Thug\u2019s \u201cYSL\u201d \u2014 nominally a record label \u2014 was also a violent gang called \u201cYoung Slime Life\u201d that had wrought \u201chavoc\u201d on Atlanta for years. Thug was released from jail in October after a judge sentenced him to just probation, a stunning defeat for District Attorney Fani Willis after her office had labeled him a dangerous gang boss.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked Friday (June 6) if the massive prosecution had been a \u201cwaste of taxpayer money,\u201d Willis vehemently defended the case and stressed that it had resulted in 19 convictions: \u201cWhat my constituents say, who just voted me by 68 percent, is she\u2019s doing an amazing job,\u201d Willis told Atlanta\u2019s NBC<\/em> affiliate<\/a>. \u201cWe are making sure that this community is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA representative for the DA\u2019s office did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.<\/p>\n

\n\tPitting prosecutors in America\u2019s rap capital against a chart-topping rapper who helped shape the sound of hip-hop in the 2010s, the YSL case captivated the music business for years. Most notably, it relied heavily on song lyrics as evidence, a controversial practice that has drawn backlash from the music industry and efforts by lawmakers to stop it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case also saw Thug sit in jail for years while the messy proceedings \u2014 the longest in state history \u2014 played out in court, turning his charges into a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre and raising big questions about procedural fairness. Gunna, a frequent collaborator and prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Thug, was also initially charged, though he quickly pleaded out.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe charges against Thug and the other YSL members were built on Georgia\u2019s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, a state-level version of the federal RICO law used against the Mafia, drug cartels and other large criminal enterprises. Prosecutors alleged that members of the YSL enterprise had committed murders, carjackings, drug dealing and many other crimes \u2014 and that Thug was the \u201cKing Slime\u201d crime boss running the operation from the top.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut when the trial kicked off in January 2023, that sweeping narrative proved difficult to litigate in court.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter an unprecedented 10-month jury selection process, prosecutors slowly worked through a vast list of witnesses that included more than 100 names. Last summer, the case was delayed for weeks due to a bizarre episode over a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a witness \u2014 an incident that saw the judge removed from the case. Things got worse for the DA\u2019s office in October, when botched testimony from a state\u2019s witness sparked talk of a mistrial and prompted a wave of plea deals.<\/p>\n

\n\tProsecutors offered such a deal to Thug, but it would have seen him spend 25 years in prison. Thug\u2019s attorneys rejected that offer and instead opted to simply plead guilty \u2014 a gamble that paid off spectacularly when Judge Paige Reese Whitaker sentenced him to just probation with no time served in prison.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI know you\u2019re talented, and if you choose to continue to rap, you need to try to use your influence to let kids know that is not the way to go and that there are ways out of poverty besides hooking up with the powerful guy at the end of the street selling drugs,\u201d Whitaker said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter that, just two key defendants \u2014 Deamonte \u201cYak Gotti\u201d Kendrick and Shannon Stillwell \u2014 remained in the trial, facing some of the most serious charges in the case, including carrying out the 2015 murder of rival gang leader Donovan Thomas that played a central role in the prosecution\u2019s case. But a jury largely acquitted them on those counts in December, and both were released immediately after the verdicts.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose verdicts ended the trial, but not the case. Eppinger and several others had been separated from the case early in the proceedings to face their own trials on charges related to YSL.<\/p>\n

\n\tEppinger, an aspiring rapper who used the performing name \u201cBig Bhris,\u201d pleaded guilty to a slew of charges on Monday, including armed robbery and RICO conspiracy. Though he was sentenced to 40 years, it will be served concurrently with an existing 45-year sentence on an earlier crime, meaning he did not receive any additional prison time.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the Thomas killing formed a core part of the YSL case \u2014 Young Thug was alleged to have helped rent the car that was used in the drive-by shooting \u2014 no defendants were ever convicted of the murder. The last defendant alleged to have been involved, Damekion Garlington, took a plea deal last month that saw him sentenced to five years in prison for aggravated assault.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Friday interview, Willis argued that crime had dropped in Fulton County \u201cbecause of the efforts I have done against gangs.\u201d And she harshly criticized others \u2014 media outlets for \u201cglorifying violence,\u201d defense attorneys who \u201cdon\u2019t care about the African American community,\u201d and even Judge Whitaker \u2014 for how the YSL case has been portrayed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was an amazing time. We had 19 convictions. The community is safer,\u201d Willis said. \u201cWe made sure that we got the resolutions that we want. If they\u2019re unhappy with sentencing, they should elect other judges.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than three years after Young Thug, Gunna and dozens of others were indicted in Atlanta on gang charges, Thug\u2019s last co-defendant has pleaded guilty. A trial had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[294,2133,2493,3066,2513,1095,1094,3990],"class_list":["post-6384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-case","tag-ends","tag-guilty","tag-plea","tag-rico","tag-thug","tag-young","tag-ysl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6384","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=6384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}