Judge Ural Glanville had to end proceedings early on Wednesday after chaos broke out in court, leading to defendants, the media, and courtroom attendees being removed and a lawyer for Young Thug alleging the prosecution was behind it for publicity reasons.
Reporters covering the ongoing YSL Rico trial shared that they were asked to stop recording and to remove themselves from the courtroom and the courthouse while the judge brought order back to things.
Reporters said that undercover officers were due to testify on Wednesday, but it seems that everything was halted after one defendant, Rodalius Ryan, also known as Lil Rod, was escorted out of the courtroom by deputies, and he was reportedly heard screaming in a back room. Some of his co-defendants also became concerned for the screaming Ryan and tried to go to his aid which resulted in deputies subduing them by their seats in handcuffs.
It’s unclear what caused the defendant to be screaming or why he was even taken up by deputies. The defendants were eventually handcuffed and removed from the courtroom.
Around 6 p.m., court resumed briefly, and some of the defendants, including Young Thug, were brought back into court. In one recording, Young Thug had a rare smile as he talked with his lawyer. The rapper is seen with his mask down on his chin as he smiles and chuckles.
Before the session was officially adjourned, however, Young Thug’s lawyer Brian Steel alleged that he was informed that somebody had called the media to come to today’s hearing because “something newsworthy” was going to happen. Steel called Ryan’s removal an “orchestrated” event insinuating the District Attorney’s office might have been responsible since a Sherriff interrupted the court proceedings by shouting that they get defendant Ryan.
“I am not saying this was accurate but I was told and there are witnesses here, I could not call her, I do not know who they are, but they were alerted to come to your honourable court today because there was going to be something newsworthy, the media was called allegedly by, now I’m not saying any of these prosecutors but somebody within their office,” Steel said.
Steel continued that he was convinced the event was planned, although he didn’t single out any one person responsible.
“If that really happened that’s outrageous. To be in the middle of a hearing…that’s exactly what we don’t want to happen. Mr Williams does not want to start over, he doesn’t want to do this again. He is struggling every day he gets here as the court knows. He gets here at 4 – 5 o clock in the morning. We are fighting for his liberty… if this was an orchestrated event I feel somebody needs to never do this again in any courtroom. And I know it was orchestrated because I know how your honour is, we all do, we’ve been before each other a long time now. We’re in the middle of a hearing and to see one of our Sherriff officials say ‘get Mr Ryan’ it was clearly orchestrated – cause nobody would disturb your court- so it was clearly orchestrated with somebody.”
The attorney also said that the day’s event stands to hurt Young Thug, who has been in jail for almost a year now. The attorney used the opportunity to ask the judge to consider bond once again.
“My point is Mr Williams has done nothing to my knowledge to obstruct anything, I beg this honourable court to consider bond and I respect your rules but the truth of this matter is today was outrageous and it does hurt our system of justice.”
Fulton County prosecutor Adriane Love also addressed the court, where she denied any involvement from the D.A.’s office.
“There’s no way anyone from our office could have predicted the events that occurred today. To suggest that it was orchestrated by our office would necessarily lead to a conclusion that the results of today’s events somehow were known to people other than the defendants in this case, and that’s not possible,” Love said.
She added, “The Sheriff’s office is doing their very best to ensure that the entire courtroom is safe and secure and to suggest that somehow this event of today was orchestrated would again imply that we knew that there would be wrongdoing going on and wanted to capture it on camera somehow so I categorically object to the idea that the state has done some unethical thing.”
Judge Glanville told the attorney to file a new motion because he didn’t want the proceedings to be further tainted by his response before he saw all of the allegations and responses from the defendants and the D.A.s office.
