Young Thug's lawyer Brian Steele will not have to report to jail this weekend on criminal contempt charges after the Georgia Supreme Court granted his emergency bail motion.
The ruling, handed down on Wednesday (June 12), came two days after the Atlanta judge overseeing Young Thug's gang trial held Steel in criminal contempt in a bizarre courtroom episode centered on allegations of a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness.
The decision means Steel's jail sentence — 20 days, to be served over ten consecutive weekends starting this Friday — will be suspended until the Supreme Court rules on his appeal against the contempt order, which lawyers they argued that it was an abuse of the judge's power.
A lawyer for Steel did not immediately return a request for comment.
On Monday (June 10), months after the massive racketeering trial, Steel notified the judge Ural Glanville that he had learned of a secret “ex parte” meeting that morning between the judge, prosecutors and a witness named Kenneth Copeland. Steel argued that such a meeting, without defense counsel present, had the potential to coerce a witness and was clear grounds for a mistrial.
Instead of addressing Steel's allegations, Glanville repeatedly demanded that he reveal who had tipped him off about a private meeting in his room, saying the leak was illegal: “If you don't tell me how you got that information, you and I are going to to have problems”.
Steel refused to do so, saying the meeting itself was the problem. “You must have no communication with a sworn witness,” he told the judge. Steel said he was told that during the meeting, prosecutors and the judge pressured Copeland into testifying, saying he could be in prison for a long time if he didn't.
“If this is true, this is coercion, a witness to intimidation,” Steel told Glanville.
In an extraordinary exchange, the two continued to argue until Glanville finally ordered Steele removed from the courtroom by a bailiff. In an order issued later Monday — with Steel now represented by another well-known Georgia criminal defense attorney — Glanville ultimately sentenced Steel to 20 days in jail, to be served over 10 consecutive weekends.
In a dramatic twist, Steel asked to be allowed to serve that sentence alongside Young Thug, who has been in prison for more than two years as the trial drags on.
Thug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his group “YSL” was not actually a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life “. Prosecutors allege the group committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug trafficking and other crimes over a decade.
Jury selection began in January 2023, but the trial itself did not begin until November and has been plagued by numerous delays since then. With dozens of witnesses yet to testify in the prosecution's case, the trial is expected to last into 2025.
Following Glanville's contempt ruling against Steel, his attorneys immediately appealed the decision, arguing that the judge's actions Monday were both procedurally and substantively improper. Among other things, they cited the fact that Glanville himself had issued a ruling on a matter involving his own potentially unethical actions.
“The court intervened in this proceeding by conducting an ex parte hearing that violated Mr. Steel's client's rights,” Steel's attorney wrote in his appeal. “This created a conflict of interest for the court because his own ethical conduct was at the heart of Mr. Steel's request.”
“The court then compounded the abuse of power by presiding over the very contempt hearing where violations of its rules caused the controversy,” Steel's lawyers continued. “The court should have dismissed and allowed the contempt proceedings to be handled by a separate court.”
That appeal, filed in a state appeals court on Tuesday (June 11), went to the Supreme Court, which under Georgia case law is tasked with directly handling such appeals. And on Wednesday, the high court accepted the case and ordered Steel's sentence suspended pending a final ruling on Judge Glanville's actions.
After Monday's dust-up, YSL's trial continued with more testimony, with Steel present in the courtroom to represent Thug. But on Wednesday, lawyers for another defendant (Deamonte Kendrick) argued that Glanville should recuse himself from the case over the alleged secret meeting with prosecutors and the witness. They alleged that the meeting was intended to “harass and intimidate the sworn witness into testifying.”
When this proposition was presented to the court, Glanville quickly denied it and proceeded with the trial.
