Prosecutors in the YNW Melly trial on Monday revealed messages retrieved from his phone where he seemingly admitted to committing the murders of his friends YNW Juvy and Sakchaser.
The trial continued into its fifth week with detective Mark Moretti taking the stand to testify to messages sent to and from Jamell Demons, aka YNW Melly’s phone, via his Snapchat and Instagram account.
The detective read through messages from Instagram sent by Jamie King to Melly on the night of the killings, hours before the bodies of his friends were taken to the hospital.
The prosecution started by establishing that the phone belonged to Melly because he and his mother had exchanged greetings earlier in the night. In one message sent on October 26, 2018, at 10: 26 pm, King texted her son, “I love you,” and he replied, “I love you too.”
The prosecutor also raised ‘disappearing’ messages from Melly’s Snapchat exchange between someone called Peezy Gambino and Melly on the night of the murders. Peezy Gambino’s real name is Patrick Delovch, whom cops spoke to.
On October 26, 2018, at 20:02, Melly replied to Peezy Gambino, “I did that,” smiley face emoji followed by another message, “Shhhh.”
The response Melly gave was to Peezy Gambino, asking him, “Are you ok?”
The prosecution is claiming that after the killing of his two friends, the rumors spread that members of the YNW collective had been involved in a drive-by shooting, and some had gotten shot. The message from Peezy Gambino was expressing concern for Melly as many thought that Juvy and Sakchaser were killed in a drive-by.
The prosecution’s case theory is that they were, in fact, killed by Melly, and their deaths were staged as a drive-by.
Meanwhile, YNW Melly’s Defense Counsel, Stuart Adelstein, cross-examined Moretti on his testimony of the texts, where he raised the possibility that more than one person was using the phone that the prosecution was introducing evidence from.
Specifically, Adelstein raised the spelling of “that” from the Snapchat text and another spelling of “dat” for the same word from another phone that the prosecution said belongs to Melly.
“So when Melly spells the word ‘dat’ – you want me to go through all 19 pages or will you take my word that every time, every time, coming out of [phone number] 9807 that’s attributed to this young man that’s writing the message, he does not spell it ‘that’ but ‘dat’,” Adelstein said putting it to the witness.
“these phone messages that the state introduced on these pages that we painfully went through, he spells it “dat” not “that”, except for this one occasion,” Adelstein said.
The witness, however, maintained that Melly may have decided to use proper language on this occasion.
Moretti was also briefly cross-examined on whether the state even knew the identity of Peezy Gambino to verify that he knew Melly or may have spoken to him, but the witness said that the police identified him as Patrick Delovch and spoke to him. Adelstein, however, abruptly ended the line of questioning.
The job of the defense is to raise doubt as to whether Melly was the one who sent those texts and, ultimately, that the prosecution has not proven that the rapper was the one who sent them.
Earlier in the trial, the defense raised the fact that more than one person may have been using the phone on which evidence was taken. YNW Juvy was registered on the same phone plan as Melly.
Meanwhile, the prosecution closed its case on Monday morning, and the defense has indicated that it is ready to begin its arguments.
YNW Melly’s lawyers informed the judge that they would be calling 1-2 witnesses and the state would recall a rebuttal witness.
The defense may likely close its arguments on Tuesday, and closing arguments and directions by the judge are likely to be given at the end of this week.
