Young Thug’s court case is expected to become the longest trial in Georgia’s history

Young Thug’s court case is expected to become the longest trial in Georgia’s history. It’s been 6 months and over 2,000 potential jurors summoned, but there is still no jury yet.

Hundreds of witnesses are expected to testify and prosecutors are trying the defendants at the same time, so witnesses won’t have to be called back repeatedly. But, with the trial expected to be the longest in Fulton County’s history and seating a jury is a major challenge.

“A lot of people are being asked to set aside six to nine months of their lives, and there isn’t a large group of people with a day-to-day lifestyle that can accommodate that,” said attorney Anastasios Manettas, who represents Miles Farley, one of the 14 defendants.

Three months in, the judge is still reviewing juror hardship claims, which could run until July. Attorneys still have to narrow down the pool after that – likely pushing opening arguments to the fall.  The longest jury selection and subsequent trial in Georgia history was the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) cheating case back in 2014.

But that was until the current trial of Jeffery Williams – aka Young Thug – which has already broken the APS jury selection record of eight weeks and could easily become Georgia’s longest trial in history.

“I don’t know why this trial would be longer than the APS trial, because it’s more straightforward,” said Chris Timmons, a former prosecutor for DeKalb and Cobb counties and who is now in private practice at Knowles Gallant Timmons. “The APS trial included teachers and educators accused of cheating. This one is about gangsters.”

Nonetheless, more than eight weeks after jury selection began, not a single juror has been placed, and several hip hop-related media sites are reporting the process could last until May.

“They’ve charged them under the RICO act so they’re all connected. It’s like a circle, everybody’s connected — all part of the same scheme, all part of the same conspiracy, and so you know, you don’t want to have to do that, you know, every single time for every single defendant,” attorney and former DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James said.

James said trying multiple defendants at the same time like Fulton County prosecutors are in the YSL trial is done out of necessity.

“It’s like a puzzle, right? If you’re looking at a puzzle and a lot of the pieces are missing, you don’t really get the full picture and what the prosecution wants is for the jury to get the full picture,” James added.