ATLANTA — A defendant stabbed. A star witness jailed for refusing to testify. Screaming matches between the attorneys and the choose. An 18-month trial with no sign of ending. And on the protection desk, a famend Grammy Award-winning hip-hop star who stands accused of being the chief of a murderous avenue gang.The legal racketeering case in opposition to Younger Thug was already identified for its near-daily drama lengthy earlier than the rapper’s lead lawyer, Brian Metal, was present in legal contempt final month and ordered to serve 20 days in jail.“That is loopy! That is like communist Russia!” Metal complained in a courtroom rant days after his contempt cost, which adopted his accusation that choose and prosecutors secretly met with and pressured a key witness to testify.Lawyer Brian Metal was held in contempt of court docket in Atlanta on June 10 after not releasing data to Choose Ural Glanville. (Video: Allie Caren/The Washington Publish)On Monday, Fulton County Superior Court docket Choose Ural Glanville abruptly halted the trial indefinitely till one other choose evaluations motions from Younger Thug and others who’ve accused the choose of misconduct and wish him recused from the case. That choose has ordered prosecutors to file a response by Monday. It’s unknown when, or if, the case will resume.Already, the case had been the longest-running legal trial in Georgia historical past. Even earlier than the newest turmoil, critics questioned Glanville’s dealing with of the high-profile case, together with his resolution to permit jury choice to pull on for 10 months, in addition to weeks-long breaks in testimony and different delays that would push the trial nicely into, if not past, 2025.A number of defendants, together with Younger Thug, have sought mistrials, which the choose denied.Prosecutors appeared surprised by the choose’s resolution to recess the high-stakes case led by Fulton County District Lawyer Fani T. Willis (D). She has confronted criticism for her embrace of Georgia’s anti-racketeering statute to convey sweeping multi-defendant instances, with critics claiming such difficult instances are a drain on an already overwhelmed court docket system.The Younger Thug trial is broadly considered as a case research of how one other one in all Willis’s high-profile instances may play out if it ever makes it to trial: the racketeering prosecution of former president Donald Trump and greater than a dozen allies who’re charged with criminally conspiring to attempt to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Each proceedings function a celeb defendant and an ensemble solid of aggressive Atlanta protection attorneys working in tandem.However the wild twists and turns within the trial of Younger Thug, whose authorized identify is Jeffery Lamar Williams, have taken on a selected stage of fascination. The proceedings, that are live-streamed on the YouTube pages of Atlanta tv stations, have attracted hundreds of every day viewers drawn in by what usually seems like a actuality tv present.At one level this spring, Younger Thug seemed again at them, staring straight into the courtroom digital camera with a glance of exasperation amid the chaos. Clips of the second rapidly went viral.Rapper Younger Thug twice appears to be like straight on the courtroom digital camera as protection spars with a witness on April 16, day 61 of the YSL trial. (Video: Atlanta Information First)“Seemed straight into the digital camera like an episode of ‘The Workplace,’” declared ThuggerDaily, one in all a number of social media accounts that provide every day protection of the trial.Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional legislation professor at Georgia State College who has been intently monitoring the Trump case, mentioned he started watching the Younger Thug trial to gauge how a fancy RICO case — involving the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — with a number of defendants may play out.“I needed to get a way of the rhythm,” Kreis mentioned. “However what went from sort of an off-the-cuff peeking-in to know a Georgia RICO case has turn out to be a cleaning soap opera that I’m totally invested in.”The trial has deep political implications for Willis, who’s overwhelmingly favored to win her bid for a second time period because the county’s prime prosecutor in November however has confronted lingering questions on her management and judgment after she was accused of an improper relationship with the previous lead prosecutor on the Trump case.The 2020 election interference case has been at a standstill for months, as Trump and others attraction a choose’s ruling permitting Willis to proceed prosecuting that case. In latest weeks, Trump’s allies have seized on the Younger Thug case to assault Willis — whilst they’ve stopped wanting defending the rapper and his alleged accomplices, who stand accused of quite a few legal acts together with homicide and armed theft. Courtney Kramer, a Republican lawyer and former Trump White Home intern who’s difficult Willis this fall, has described the trial as a waste of taxpayer cash.The chaos of the Younger Thug trial might have a long-lasting impression on public help for instances that make use of Georgia’s expansive RICO legislation and even result in the statute being weakened, as some Republicans have threatened.“There’s nothing very enticing in regards to the legal justice system when considered by means of the lens of this trial,” mentioned Don Samuel, a veteran Atlanta legal protection lawyer who represents the rapper Gunna, a Younger Thug protégé who was jailed for seven months earlier than getting into an Alford plea, permitting him to plead responsible to a RICO cost whereas additionally sustaining his innocence. “The entire thing is uncontrolled.”A gang chief — or an artist posing as one?The indictment of Younger Thug and 27 alleged associates in Might 2022 despatched shock waves by means of Atlanta’s hip-hop scene, one of the crucial vibrant within the nation. The rapper was taken into custody at his residence in Atlanta’s tony Buckhead neighborhood, filmed by an area tv station as police escorted him down a driveway in a white tank prime, his arms cuffed behind his again.By then, Younger Thug was a sensation past his hometown of Atlanta, together with his mumble-like supply and eccentric stream crowning him one in all hip-hop’s most original innovators over his decade-plus profession. With three chart-topping albums, he was identified for transcending style, collaborating with stars nicely past the rap world and spawning a legion of imitators, with a gender-busting style sense that had made him a mainstay within the pages of Vogue.However Fulton County prosecutors have alleged there was a darker facet to the now-32-year-old rapper, casting him as a ruthless chief of a savage avenue gang often known as Younger Slime Life, or YSL, on the middle of an explosion of violence throughout Atlanta over the previous decade.Willis, a longtime prosecutor who was elected district lawyer in 2020, had been in workplace for simply over a 12 months when she introduced costs in opposition to a cultural icon of town. However as she would later do with Trump, Willis insisted she was not cowed by Younger Thug’s standing.“It doesn’t matter what your notoriety is, what your fame is,” Willis declared. “If you happen to come to Fulton County, Georgia, and also you commit crimes, and positively if these crimes are in furtherance of a avenue gang, then you will turn out to be a goal and a spotlight of this district lawyer’s workplace, and we’re going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the legislation.”The preliminary 56-count indictment charged Younger Thug on simply two counts: participation in legal avenue gang exercise and conspiring to violate Georgia’s anti-racketeering legislation because the alleged chief of YSL. In August 2022, he was indicted on six extra drug and weapons costs together with possession of an unlawful machine gun.Younger Thug is standing trial with 5 others after a majority of the defendants reached plea offers or had their instances severed.Although he was not charged individually, Younger Thug was implicated in additional than a dozen alleged acts in furtherance of the gang conspiracy. Amongst different issues, prosecutors have alleged he rented the automobile used within the 2015 homicide of a rival gang chief, Donovan Thomas, and later that 12 months threatened to shoot an Atlanta-area mall safety guard within the face. The indictment additionally claims alleged YSL members mentioned getting his permission to kill the rapper YFN Lucci, the alleged chief of a rival avenue gang, a plot that was by no means carried out.In a controversial transfer, prosecutors have cited Younger Thug’s social media posts and lyrics to bolster their claims that he’s a gang chief, accusing him of flashing the gang’s alleged hand signal and rapping about YSL’s alleged crimes.The rapper, who has been held with out bail since his arrest greater than two years in the past, has pleaded not responsible to all counts. Metal, his lawyer, has accused prosecutors of attacking Black artwork and wrongly concentrating on his consumer based mostly on a fictional persona aimed toward promoting information.Metal has claimed YSL stands for Younger Stoner Life and is nothing greater than a report label. He has described his consumer as a “studio gangster,” not an actual one, and mentioned his stage identify, Thug, stands for “Really Humble Beneath God” — a nod to his consumer’s impoverished upbringing within the violent tasks of South Atlanta.“What is occurring on this case is flawed,” Metal mentioned final 12 months.Prosecutors allege the persona is actual, not artwork. Throughout opening statements, lead prosecutor Adriane Love learn traces from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Legislation of the Jungle.”“For the energy of the pack is the wolf, and the energy of the wolf is the pack,” Love recited. The members and associates of YSL, Love advised the jury, “moved like a pack, with the defendant Jeffery Williams as its head.”Days later, the courtroom digital camera panned to Younger Thug seated at his front-row protection desk. He wore a sweater emblazoned with a cartoon wolf.Traditionally lengthy trial rapidly went ‘off the rails’Virtually instantly, the case was chaotic and in contrast to something ever seen in a metropolis that has been no stranger to headline-grabbing trials.The case was assigned to Glanville, a 29-year veteran of the Fulton County courts who was appointed in late 2022 as chief of the Atlanta Judicial Circuit. A brigadier normal within the U.S. Military Reserve, Glanville additionally serves as chief choose of the U.S. Military Court docket of Legal Appeals — a army background that some near the case believed would instill wanted self-discipline in an advanced continuing.However from the beginning there have been logistical issues, together with discovering a courtroom sufficiently big to suit the six defendants and their attorneys.Beginning in January 2023, Glanville summoned greater than 2,000 Fulton County residents as he sought to impanel a jury. The method was anticipated to take a number of weeks, however it in the end stretched nicely into the autumn, prompting personal complaints amongst attorneys on either side that Glanville was being too lenient about excusing potential jurors who didn’t need their lives disrupted.“That was the primary clue that this was going off the rails,” mentioned Chris Timmons, a former Atlanta-area prosecutor who has tried quite a few RICO instances. “Ten months to seat a jury?”Simply days into jury choice, a co-defendant was seen strolling as much as Younger Thug and handing him what prosecutors later mentioned was a Percocet capsule. One other co-defendant later was searched by deputies who discovered baggage of marijuana sewn into his underwear. A protection lawyer was arrested the following day when he tried to enter the courtroom together with his prescription capsules. Later, a Fulton County sheriff’s deputy assigned to courtroom safety was fired, arrested and charged with passing contraband to a co-defendant with whom she was accused of getting an inappropriate relationship.Opening statements lastly started Nov. 27, however in early December the trial was halted after co-defendant Shannon Stillwell was stabbed a number of instances by one other inmate on the Fulton County Jail. Amid hypothesis the assault might be associated to the trial, Glanville ordered Stillwell, upon his launch from the hospital, to be “stored separate from the opposite defendants on this case always.”Glanville postponed proceedings till early 2024, and when it resumed, the case continued to maneuver at a glacial tempo. At the least two witnesses have been jailed, and one other admitted he was “excessive” on the stand.Proceedings hardly ever began on time, and five-to-10-minute breaks all through the day usually stretch to a half-hour or extra. In April, Glanville threatened to carry court docket on the weekends.Choose Ural Glanville scolds attorneys about delays and being unprofessional on April 17, day 62 of the YSL trial. (Video: Atlanta Information First)“If you happen to don’t need your Saturday and Sunday sucked up, I feel we have to work a bit tougher,” Glanville warned the attorneys. However he has not adopted by means of.By June, greater than seven months after opening statements, prosecutors weren’t but midway by means of their checklist of greater than 200 witnesses. Jurors heard testimony on roughly half of the trial’s first 100 days, and so they haven’t been in court docket since June 17.The tempo slowed even additional amid lingering questions in regards to the June 10 assembly between Glanville, prosecutors and Kenneth Copeland, an affiliate of Younger Thug and a star witness who was jailed when he refused to testify.Citing an unnamed supply, Metal alleged that Glanville and prosecutors pressured Copeland to testify. In keeping with a transcript of the assembly made public Monday, each prosecutors and the choose repeatedly warned Copeland that as a result of he was granted immunity, he would stay jailed till the tip of the case if he declined to reply questions. The transcript provided no readability on whether or not Glanville crossed a line that would result in his recusal. The choose has referred to as the assembly “correct” and mentioned that no events gained “procedural, substantive, or tactical benefits.”When first confronted in regards to the assembly, Glanville demanded to know who advised Metal about it, arguing the leak violated attorney-client privilege and the privateness of his chambers. When Metal refused to say, the choose held the lawyer in legal contempt and sentenced him to twenty days in jail to be served on the weekends — a sentence the Georgia Supreme Court docket later stayed as Metal appeals.As Metal ready for sheriff’s deputies to escort him out of the courtroom, he calmly eliminated his jacket and tie.The occasions have surprised Atlanta’s authorized group, together with those that know Glanville and have been stunned by how he has dealt with the case. Greater than a dozen criminal-defense attorneys confirmed up in help of Metal shortly after he was held in contempt — together with Ashleigh Service provider, an Atlanta-area lawyer who chairs the state’s affiliation of criminal-defense attorneys and has taken on Metal’s contempt case.Service provider, who additionally represents one in all Trump’s co-defendants, made nationwide headlines this 12 months when she accused Willis of getting an improper romantic relationship with a particular prosecutor on the election case.Her sudden look within the Younger Thug courtroom had the texture of a crossover tv occasion, as she challenged Glanville on his dealing with of the contempt submitting. When Glanville pressed Service provider on “present” case legislation involving contempt costs in opposition to attorneys, she advised him there was none. “Contempt of attorneys just isn’t a standard continuing,” she mentioned.On Monday, Glanville was met with a surprised silence as he introduced the trial would recess till one other choose determines if he can transfer ahead. A prosecutor pressed the choose on when the problem is likely to be taken up, questioning the impression on the jury.“I don’t know,” Glanville replied. “I don’t have something to do with that.”The courtroom digital camera panned the room. On the protection desk sat Younger Thug, reclined in his chair, arms in his lap, his eyes closed.