Left: FILE – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears during a hearing regarding defendant Harrison Floyd, a leader in the organization Black Voices for Trump, as part of the Georgia election indictments, Nov. 21, 2023, in Atlanta (Dennis Byron/Hip Hop Enquirer via AP, File). Right: Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams (Law&Crime).
With equal parts derision and seriousness, a Georgia attorney representing one of the defendants in the YSL racketeering (RICO) trial filed a motion on Tuesday castigating the latest tactic employed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her top lieutenant.
The title of the defense motion sums up the current dispute:
Opposition To State’s Motion In Limine To Allow The State To Present All Relevant Evidence To The Jury And To Deny Defendant Objections To The Presentation Of Relevant Evidence On The Basis That Said Evidence Is A “Waste Of Time”
A footnote in the filing by defense attorney Doug Weinstein concedes: “Wow. That is really a mouthful.”
But whatever might be considered unnecessarily loquacious about the title of the defense motion is entirely due to an earlier motion filed by the state, the responding lawyer says.
The prosecution’s motion is titled:
Motion In Limine To Allow The State To Present All Relevant Evidence To The Jury And To Deny Defendant Objections To The Presentation Of Relevant Evidence On The Basis That Said Evidence Is A “Waste Of Time”
While the yearlong-plus trial against Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams and others has mostly been in hiatus this month due to hurricane season and several missing police reports, the state and the defense have continued motions practice.
In the state’s motion, Willis and Fulton Count Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love moved to “present all relevant evidence to the jury and to deny objections to the presentation of relevant evidence on the basis that said evidence is a ‘waste of time.””
In response, Weinstein accused the state of filing a “frivolous” motion that “genuinely merits no response” but said he felt “compelled” to do so because it appeared prosecutors were planning “some form of carpet bombing of additional, pointless, cumulative evidence.”
Such evidence, the defense attorney argued, was “clearly excludable” under the relevant rule of evidence. He also accused prosecutors of “laying down some type of suppression fire” with their motion.
The defense mocks Willis and Love, at length, for the conclusory and unsourced nature of their latest motion:
In a surprisingly succinct and efficient bit of lawyering from the State, the State requests that this Honorable Court deny all future defense 403 Objections regarding the State presenting relevant evidence that is a waste of time. The State cites neither statute, case law, nor the highest law of the land according to the State, Carlson on Evidence, to support its position that the Court take up the challenge of overriding the edicts of the Georgia Legislature, along with virtually every other legislative and judicial body in our nation, by ignoring O.C.G.A. 24-4-403.
The merciless mocking continues.
“Ironically, the State’s motion is a perfect example of the need for this Honorable Court to weigh in on the State wasting the time of all involved in the present case by barring otherwise relevant evidence that is a waste of time under Rule 403,” the defense motion goes on. “In a sense, the motion needs no opposition as the motion itself serves as its own evident opposition.”
Last week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, who assumed control over the long and winding trial after Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural D. Glanville was recused, criticized Love for “poor lawyering.”
“I can’t figure out what it is,” the judge told the prosecutor. “But it is baffling to me that somebody with your years of experience, time after time, seems to purposefully hide the ball as long as you possibly can.”
Young Thug and five other codefendants — Shannon “SB” Stillwell, Marquavius “Qua” Huey, Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, Quamarvious “Qua” Nichols, and Rodalius “Lil Rod” Ryan — face a long trial after an 86-page RICO indictment was filed against 28 total defendants in 2022. Since then, nine defendants have taken plea deals, including Antonio “Mounk Tounk” Sledge and Williams’ brother Quantavious “Unfoonk” Grier. Others have had their cases separated.
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