ATLANTA — As three YSL defendants have taken plea deals in the last two days, the attorney for one remaining defendant says he is rejecting plea offers and "fully intends to take this to the jury and get our not guilty verdicts."
The plea deals accepted by the other defendants this week leave just three defendants of the original 28 people indicted in the case remaining in this current trial. Those three defendants are Young Thug (legal name Jeffery Williams), Shannon Stillwell and Deamonte Kendrick, aka Yak Gotti.
Yak Gotti's lawyer, Douglas Weinstein, told 11Alive's Grace King on Thursday that his client had rejected the most recent plea offer from prosecutors.
"Yak Gotti has rejected the State's latest plea offer and fully intends to take this to the jury and get our not guilty verdicts and go home," Weinstein said in a statement.
The context around how the trial will go forward remains unclear. It has been more than a week now since a regular court session, as negotiations have been going on between prosecutors and defense attorneys and the jury has not been summoned back to court. As of 2:30 p.m. Thursday, there had not been any regular court session for the day.
The three defendants to plead guilty this week under negotiated deals were Quamarvious Nichols, on Tuesday, then Rodalius Ryan and Marquavius Huey on Wednesday.
There were varying terms to those plea deals, which you can read about here.
The sudden flurry of plea deals appears to have been spurred on by the possibility of a mistrial looming over the case. That possibility arose last week after a new witness, rapper Slimelife Shawty, took the stand and was asked to identify others involved in the case based on social media posts.
While reading a caption for one of the posts in question, Lee accidentally read an unredacted version on the paper exhibit instead of the redacted version displayed on a monitor.
The unredacted version featured the hashtag #FreeQua, which Lee read aloud to the jury. Defense teams quickly moved for a mistrial as the jury was not supposed to know which defendants had been incarcerated.
Following the mishap, Judge Paige Whitaker excused the jury and witness and instantly began admonishing the prosecution.
Whitaker told the defense while she would not agree to a mistrial with prejudice, she left the possibility open for a mistrial without prejudice, meaning the case would end, but the State could retry it.
The trial, which began in November 2023, is already the longest in Georgia state history.