ATLANTA — Atlanta rapper Young Thug, defense attorney Brian Steel outlined in his opening statement to the YSL trial on Tuesday, used his art to escape "an environment, a community, a society that was filled with depression, despair, hopelessness, and helplessness."
A day after prosecutors, in their own opening statement, cast Young Thug as the kingpin of a street gang that "created a crater in the middle of Fulton County's Cleveland Avenue community" with crime and violence, Steel sought to flip that narrative on its head -- describing the painful conditions out of which the rapper arose.
Growing up in a small, crowded apartment, with little food and scant clothing -- explaining even that his now-famous experimental fashion sense partly arose out of needing to wear his sisters' clothes -- in a violent, harshly-police neighborhood instilled in the rapper, Steel said, that "our criminal justice system was not just."
Cutting to the core of the sprawling case that will see prosecutors try to interweave numerous gang-related crimes under the RICO umbrella to implicate Young Thug -- whose legal name is Jeffery Williams -- and his five co-defendants now on trial, Steel said it was in this environment that the rapper saw that "the people in the neighborhood who were known to be liars... would be used by prosecutors."
"Jeffery learned that these liars, these snitches, these rats they would come into the courtroom, take a witness stand to tell the God's honest truth... and they would testify against people accused of crimes," Steel said. "Jeffery thinks that the entire justice system is corrupt and should be blown up."
In an expansive, multiple-hours-long statement, the defense attorney addressed each count Young Thug faces and each overt act within the indictment that alleges to show his gang involvement. That included Steel addressing one of the central accusations against Young Thug: that he allegedly rented the car used in the murder of Donovan Thomas in 2015 and played an active role in the killing.
You can watch the full breakdown below:
Going through the events in January 2015 that led up to and ended with the shooting and killing of Thomas, Steel concluded: "Jeffery Williams is not involved."
It is a theme he previewed for the defense of Young Thug that will span a trial expected to last well into 2024. A unifying theme: the violence he raps of is the real experience he grew up with and not, as prosecutors will try to convince a jury, tangible claims about crimes he ordered or committed.
"These are the people he knew, these are the stories he knew, these are the words that he rhymed -- this isn't a ballad or a book, these are phrases in a song and whatever the listener takes from it, you will learn, is what the songs mean," Steel said, addressing the jury. "This is art. This is freedom of speech in America."
Of the case itself, Steel offered his assessment to the jury that it is simply the product of biased police and an overly aggressive district attorney's office.
"Jeffery has been targeted," he said.
Steel was the second defense attorney to address the jury. Court is expected to resume Wednesday morning and witnesses will be called to testify. The judge asked everyone to be in the courtroom by 9:30 a.m.