ATLANTA — After more than a month of delays, Georgia's longest trial ever is expected to resume with testimony in front of a jury soon.
One of the biggest questions going back into the YSL RICO trial: How will the jurors be told there is a new judge presiding over the case?
Over the last month, the trial has been assigned two new judges, after Judge Ural Glanville was taken off the case. The interruption stemmed from a meeting between Glanville, prosecutors and a witness with no defense attorneys present, known as an ex parte meeting, that drew furious objections from the defense attorneys and the motions to have Glanville taken off the case.
Ultimately, those motions succeeded.
Since her appointment, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker has denied almost every motion that would end the ongoing trial.
There is still one mistrial motion Judge Whitaker has yet to rule on, though discussion throughout the last week implies any possibility of a mistrial is faint.
In theory, the jury should know nothing about any of this, as part of jury duty is to avoid outside information about the case.
Whitaker's current plan regarding the jurors is to have them return next week and pick up the trial roughly where it left off before Glanville was removed. She will get the final say in how the jury is informed about Glanville no longer overseeing the trial.
The defense wants a pointed approach: they want jurors to know why Glanville is gone nine months into the case and for his comments to not influence their decision. The state, however, wants more neutral language.
After lunch on Friday, Whitaker read her version of the announcement to the court: "None of Judge Glanville's decisions and nothing Judge Glanville said during the trial is evidence, the decisions and remarks of a judge do not mean that the judge favors or leans to one side or another in the case."
