ATLANTA — Perhaps fitting for a trial that had already taken 18 months to arrive -- nearly a year of that on jury selection -- the start to opening statements Monday in the case against Young Thug and the alleged YSL street gang was beset by more delays.
Court was first delayed by nearly an hour after a juror wasn't on time because their car broke down. Then midway through the prosecution's opening statement, a motion for mistrial and further objections by defense lawyers waylaid proceedings.
The jury was sent to lunch after the second interruption, with plans to return at 1:30 p.m.
Opening with a quote from "The Law of the Jungle" from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, lead prosecutor Adriane Love sought to frame YSL as a "pack," with origins in an earlier gang, Roc Crew ("Raised on Cleveland" for Roc) taking its lead from Young Thug, whose legal name is Jeffery Williams.
The evidence, Love asserted to the jury, will show at trial that YSL "created a crater in the middle of Fulton County's Cleveland Avenue community, that sucked in the youth, the innocence and even the lives of some of its youngest members."
The statement began to trace the contours of their case: that Young Thug was "King Slime" of the gang, and that YSL has been -- beyond the rapper's record label -- a unifying umbrella for organized crime including armed robbery, car thefts, gun thefts, drug trafficking and "last and certainly not least, murder."
"YSL, as the evidence will show -- they didn't move individually," Love said. "The members and associates of YSL they moved like a pack, with the defendant Jeffery Williams as its head."
But the prosecution did not complete its full opening statement, first with Young Thug's attorney Brian Steel motioning for mistrial. He contended the mistrial was appropriate because prosecutors had inserted a slide with their opening presentation to jurors that he had not been given beforehand, as was the court's instruction.
The judge denied the mistrial ordering a curative instruction instead, but that was not the end of the issues with the slides.
After the mistrial matter was settled, further objections from defense attorneys arose as they said slides slated to be shown further into the opening statement contained errors about their clients.
Judge Ural Glanville ordered corrections to be made during the lunch break, and noted that if any more arise after lunch he may strike the slide presentation from the opening statements entirely.