“Innocent until proven guilty” hits different when they send you directly to solitary.
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After almost a week in Cobb County jail, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports Young Thug’s legal team filed an emergency motion for bond on Friday because of the “inhumane” condition. He was named with Gunna and 26 others in the 56-count indictment against affiliates of the YSL label, which Thug co-founded. The 30-year-old has been locked up since he was arrested during a raid at his Atlanta home on Monday for allegedly violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Lamar Williams, was held in isolation while he awaits a bond hearing in Fulton County Superior Court. Attorney Brian Steel claims Thug was unable to sleep due to an overhead light in his cell that stays on for 24 hours a day and unable to eat the “inedible” food served at the jail. The emergency motion states that Williams has been left in a windowless cement room unable to exercise, shower, or speak to anyone outside of his attorneys “as if he is a forgotten person alone in the world.”
“He will be vindicated but this is wrong. He is being treated the exact same as the person next door to him who has been arrested tried and convicted for murder and sentenced to death,” Steele said.
The court did not set a date after the first time Steel filed for a bond hearing on Tuesday.
The failure to schedule a bond hearing for this innocent man, coupled with the inhumane and unconstitutional treatment of Mr. Williams, mandates that this Honorable Court grant bond until a hearing can be held.” The motion also requested that “Williams is not held in isolation and that he be given access to televisions, windows, showers and other surroundings that pretrial detainees typically receive.”
The new filing also asserts that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis violated Thug’s first and fourteenth amendment rights when she used his own song lyrics against him as criminal evidence. Steel said those songs were nothing more than his client simply doing his job by “lawfully exercising his freedom of speech and expression in his profession as a musical artist.”
“The state seeks to insinuate criminal conduct from quotations from song lyrics and social media posts. To weaponize these words by charging overt acts to support a supposed conspiracy is unconscionable and unconstitutional,” he wrote.
According to WSB-TV, the dungeon-like conditions are supposed to be for the 30-year-old’s own good. The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office said Thug is in administrative solitary confinement for his own safety and the 24-hour light allows the officers to make sure that he’s ok at all times.
In addition to allegations from the RICO indictment that Thugger rented a car that was later used in the 2015 murder of alleged rival gang member Donovan Thomas and conspired to murder rapper YFN Lucci, the raid of his Buckhead home led to seven more felony charges. Police claim they found several guns, 1,300 grams of marijuana, 31 bottles of Promethazine syrup, and 20 bottles of “YSL Slime Drink” laced with THC.
“Mr. Williams committed no crime whatsoever,” Steel said about his Grammy-winning client, and he will “fight till his last drop of blood to clear him.”
