(New York) Eighteen months after it opened, the interminable trial of American hip-hop star Young Thug, accused of being the leader of a street gang, will suffer new delays after the recusal of his judge, who was implicated by the defense.
Judge Ural Glanville, who presided over a lengthy 10-month jury selection and eight months of debate, was forced to step down Monday for arranging a meeting with prosecutors and a key witness without informing all parties.
Another judge, hearing the incident, considered that “the need to preserve public confidence in the judicial system weighs in favour of excluding Judge Glanville from further processing of this case”.
The rapper, a figure of the South American hip-hop scene, appears with five co-defendants at this trial in Atlanta, accused of being the leader of a criminal street gang, facts he denies.
Prosecutors say his label, Young Stoner Life Records, is a front for a branch of the Bloods gang known as Young Slime Life, or YSL, which has been involved in murder, drug trafficking and violent carjackings.
The arrest in May 2022 of the singer-songwriter Best Friend, Hot Or Checkcrowned with a Grammy Award in 2019 as co-writer of the “best song” of the year, This is Americahad come as a shock to Atlanta’s influential hip-hop scene.
Young Thug has collaborated with the biggest names in rap and pop, from Drake to Travis Scott, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber and Elton John.
The trial is taking place in Fulton County Court, the same court where Donald Trump is being prosecuted for illegally attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state of Georgia. The former president of the United States, targeted on Saturday by an assassination attempt, is being prosecuted there under the same laws punishing criminal conspiracy.
Young Thug’s trial is also controversial because prosecutors used lyrics from some of his songs as evidence of his criminal activities, a method denounced by the defense, because hip-hop lyrics often borrow from criminal jargon and describe the harsh reality experienced in certain neighborhoods. Already used in other cases, this method is criticized as an attack on freedom of artistic expression.