{"id":7474,"date":"2025-08-22T02:57:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T02:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-dolph-murder-suspect-acquitted-at-trial-of-organizing-shooting\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T02:57:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T02:57:05","slug":"young-dolph-murder-suspect-acquitted-at-trial-of-organizing-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-dolph-murder-suspect-acquitted-at-trial-of-organizing-shooting\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Dolph Murder Suspect Acquitted at Trial of Organizing Shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA<\/span> man accused of organizing the hit that killed rapper Young Dolph in 2021 has been found not guilty of criminal charges.<\/p>\n

\n\tHernandez Govan was acquitted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder after a weeklong trial on Thursday (Aug. 21), according to court records obtained by Billboard<\/em>. Govan was charged with helping hire two men to fatally shoot Young Dolph (Adolph Thorton Jr.) in broad daylight at a bakery in the 36-year-old rapper\u2019s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Dolph\u2019s alleged shooters, Justin Johnson, was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison. The second, Cornelius Smith, is cooperating with Memphis prosecutors in the hopes of getting a more lenient punishment.<\/p>\n

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\n\tSmith testified at the trials of both Johnson and Govan, saying they all conspired to commit the murder after Anthony \u201cBig Jook\u201d Mims \u2013 the brother of Yo Gotti, another Memphis rapper who had a public feud with Dolph \u2013 put up a $100,000 bounty.<\/p>\n

\n\tBig Jook, who was never charged in the case, was killed in a shooting last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tGovan has maintained that he did not direct anybody to kill Dolph. His defense attorney Manny Arora<\/strong> cast Smith as a liar and accused investigators of botching the murder investigation, citing shoddy cell phone records to missing DNA evidence. This appears to have swayed jurors, who acquitted Govan after deliberating for three hours on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGovan was never in on any of it,\u201d Arora told Fox 13 Memphis<\/a> <\/em>after the verdict on Thursday. \u201cThis was all garbage, and I\u2019m grateful that he\u2019s out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGovan himself addressed the media as well, calling the prosecution \u201ccorrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been born again,\u201d added Govan. \u201cI get a chance to restart my life and do some positive things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReps from the Shelby County District Attorney\u2019s Office did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tDolph was a fast-rising star in the rap world before his 2021 murder. He had three albums reach the top 10 of the Billboard 200, with his 2020 LP Rich Slave <\/em>peaking at No. 4. He founded the independent record label Paper Route Empire, which continues to put out music from Dolph\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Key Glock and other rappers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man accused of organizing the hit that killed rapper Young Dolph in 2021 has been found not guilty of criminal charges. Hernandez Govan was acquitted of first-degree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5526,6673,2528,5245,2735,4546,342,1094],"class_list":["post-7474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-acquitted","tag-dolph","tag-murder","tag-organizing","tag-shooting","tag-suspect","tag-trial","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474","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=7474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}