Young Thug’s lawyer Brian Steel asked for more than 300 witnesses to be excluded from the YSL RICO trial at a court hearing on Thursday (November 16). Georgia prosecutors confirmed they had 737 people on their witness list.
Judge Ural Glanville questioned the prosecution’s addition of potential witnesses in recent months. The judge noted there were 632 witnesses in September. The number surpassed 700 in October.
Fulton County prosecutor Adriane Love said the prosecution intended to pare down the witness list. But Love justified the number of witnesses less than two weeks before the start of Young Thug’s trial.
“It would be different if it were just one murder or just one aggravated assault or just one burglary on the indictment, your honor,” Love told Judge Glanville. “But there is—there are lists of acts that we seek to show, to introduce as evidence to show the pattern of racketeering activity that they conspired to commit.”
Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, is one of six defendants awaiting trial in the YSL RICO case. Many of his co-defendants accepted plea deals or had their cases severed ahead of the trial.
The YSL RICO trial is scheduled to begin on November 27. Young Thug has remained in jail since his May 2022 arrest.