Yet another threatened mistrial was averted Monday when the jury hearing Young Thug’s gang and racketeering trial in Atlanta agreed they could disregard prior testimony from a key witness in the contentious case.
Jurors were given about one second to make their decision after walking into court following a nearly two-month break and seeing for the first time that there was a new presiding judge. During the jury’s lengthy recess, Fulton County Chief Judge Ural Glanville was removed from the case and replaced by Judge Paige Reese Whitaker due to his handling of a recusal motion involving a secret meeting with prosecutors and a sworn witness.
“I will be the presiding judge in this case moving forward. And you are not to concern yourself with this change,” Judge Whitaker admonished the jurors. She then instructed the jury to disregard any “disparaging” statements Judge Glanville made about any lawyers. She also instructed them to disregard the second half of witness Kenneth “Woody” Copeland’s prior testimony. (Copeland spent six days on the witness stand in June, but Judge Whitaker agreed to strike everything that came after the first motion to recuse Judge Glanville entered on June 12.)
“If there is anybody who cannot set aside and completely disregard that portion of the evidence in your deliberations, please stand up now and let me know if there are any of you,” Judge Whitaker said. “Alright, thank you,” she said a moment later without skipping a beat.
It was a tense exchange considering Judge Whitaker said last week that if multiple jurors said they couldn’t “unhear” prior testimony, the court “might have a mistrial.” With four alternates seated along with the current 12-person jury, it would have taken five jurors standing up to trigger such an event.
Monday morning’s session moved quickly. Before calling in the jury, Judge Whitaker put Copeland back on the witness stand and asked if he would continue his testimony or refuse to cooperate. Described by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator, Copeland appeared under subpoena with an immunity deal and was told that if he refused to answer questions, he would be held in contempt and sent to jail. Copeland looked around the courtroom, hung his head, closed his eyes, looked back at the judge and answered, “Alright.”
At a hearing without the jury last week, Copeland told the court he wasn’t sure if he would show up Monday and willingly testify. “It depends on how I wake up,” he told the court Tuesday.
Douglas Weinstein, the lawyer for rap artist Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, one of Williams’ five co-defendants in the current trial, told Rolling Stone on Friday that he believed any mistrial connected to Copeland’s testimony should end the case for good. “I’ll argue it’s a mistrial based on prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and therefore double jeopardy should attach and we should not be subject to retrial,” he said. Referring to Copeland, the lawyer said, “He’s the most colorful witness we’ve had, certainly the most memorable. How do you forget that?”
During his time on the stand in June, Copeland rocked back and forth, yawned dramatically and admitted he was robotically giving answers without listening to questions. His repeated “I don’t recall” reply became a meme on social media. Colorful or not, Copeland is a key witness in the case. In a series of interviews with investigators, Copeland made various and often inconsistent statements about things he allegedly heard in the aftermath of the January 10, 2015 murder of Donovan “Big Nut” Thomas Jr. listed in the indictment. Prosecutors are trying to use those statements to support allegations Kendrick and another co-defendant now on trial, Shannon Stillwell, were involved in the drive-by shooting and that Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, rented the silver Infinity later linked to the murder.
When he resumed his testimony Monday, Copeland repeatedly called himself a liar who couldn’t be trusted. “You all know that I’m full of shit,” he told Deputy District Attorney Simone Hylton. The prosecutor pressed Copeland repeatedly to admit he voluntarily met with police hours after Thomas’ murder to “clear” his own name.
“My motive was to get the heat off of me. The only way I was going to get it off of me, I thought, [was] by putting it on Thug. I felt he was rich, and police lock me up and do whatever they want to do to me because I’m broke and I can’t afford to pay for a lawyer. He’s rich, they’re not going to bother him. So I got it off me by putting it on him,” Copeland testified. He acknowledged his testimony on Monday was favorable to Williams’ defense.
“It may seem like I’m trying to help Thug out. I’m not trying to help him out. I don’t care nothing about him, what he got going on or nothing. I care about the truth. The truth was, I was going through a phase in my life, and I put all the blame on him. I don’t know what he did. I don’t know what he got going on. But you all got me on the stand, and I’m telling the God’s honest truth. Leave me out of this. I made all these stories up, put the blame on him to get myself out of a situation because the police told me they want a big fish, and I’m a little fish,” Copeland testified.
Copeland used his “I don’t recall” catchphrase dozens of times but seemed more willing to take advantage of his immunity deal as the hours dragged on Monday. At one point he turned to the judge to confirm he couldn’t get in trouble for any confessions on the witness stand and then claimed he shot up a barber shop belonging to the father of Atlanta rapper Rich Homie Quan. When asked if this was an event that helped fuel an alleged rivalry between Williams’ alleged “Young Slime Life” gang and Rich Homie Quan’s alleged “Inglewood Family Bloods” gang, Copeland said the shooting stemmed from a private beef separate from Williams. According to prosecutors, murder victim Donovan Thomas Jr. was a leader of the Inglewood Family Bloods. (Attempts to reach a spokesperson for Rich Homie Quan were not immediately successful Monday.)
Before he was excused for the day and ordered back Tuesday morning, Copeland said the friend he was with during the alleged shooting of Rich Homie Quan’s dad’s barber shop was the same person he handed off the rented Infinity to before Thomas’ murder.
Williams is not charged with Thomas’ murder in the indictment. The defendants facing that charge include Kendrick and Stillwell, who have pleaded not guilty. Last week, Judge Whitaker denied the main mistrial motion from Kendrick’s defense related to the secret June 10 meeting between Judge Glanville, prosecutors and Copeland that ultimately led to Glanville’s recusal.
Judge Whitaker said she was not persuaded by the claim Judge Glanville “coerced” Copeland to testify. “The predecessor judge did not on the whole use intimidating rhetoric, but rather sought to ensure that Copeland understood the nuances of the decision he had to make; and he explained that many of the decisions about what could happen to Copeland were not his to make but were up to the prosecutors. Still, some of the information provided to Copeland may have been inaccurate,” she wrote. According to the ruling, the recusal of Judge Glanville on July 15 “mooted” any claim he showed “bias.”
In their 65-count RICO indictment naming 28 defendants, prosecutors allege YSL was a Bloods-affiliated gang that terrorized Atlanta with drug sales, armed robberies, shootings and three murders. Prosecutors allege Williams co-founded and led the gang as he simultaneously rose to prominence in the music industry and won a Grammy award. Williams has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Brian Steel, has denounced the state’s RICO indictment as “unconscionable.” In filings to recuse Glanville, Steel called the judge “unethical” and the trial “broken.”
“He’s not running this criminal street gang,” Steel said of Williams during his opening statement last November. “He is not sitting there telling people to kill people. He doesn’t need their money. Jeffery is worth tens of millions of dollars.”
In his opening statement, Steel called Copeland a “notorious criminal.” He said Copeland once was named a Top 10 violent criminal in Georgia by state prosecutors. Steel said Copeland had broken into Donovan Thomas Jr.’s car and stolen his jewelry, wallet and cell phone shortly before the murder, making him a target of Thomas’ ire and a suspect in the murder. Steel contends Copeland lied to police in recorded interviews to deflect blame.
More than 70 witnesses have testified so far in the high-profile trial. Prosecutors say they intend to call at least 100 more. After that, lawyers for each of the six defendants will have a chance to call their own witnesses. The trial is expected to last through the end of year, possibly into February or March, Judge Whitaker told Copeland last week when she was explaining how he could remain in custody that long if he refused to testify.
