An important piece of evidence in the NBA YoungBoy federal gun case has reportedly been green-lit to present in court. According to The Advocate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has overturned a key ruling, allowing a video of the rapper holding a Glock and posing with another gun outfitted with a vertical foregrip to be used as evidence. Baton Rouge police discovered the video on one of photographer Marvin Ramsey’s SD memory cards after the 2020 video music video shoot bust.
NBA YoungBoy, Ramsey and 14 others were arrested on weapons charges after police found several guns in the underbrush and vehicles at the scene. The feds took over the state case in March 2021 and indicted the rapper on possessing a firearm following a felony conviction on possession of a firearm not registered to him.
YoungBoy’s attorneys successfully got the video suppressed in February 2022 when U.S. Chief District Judge Shelly Dick agreed their client had a vested property interest in the video footage, making it constitutionally protected by Fourth Amendment laws that shield the public from unreasonable searches and seizures. The suppression ruling was a major blow to the feds’ case against NBA YoungBoy. Prosecutors asked Dick to reconsider, but she doubled down on her decision last June. Federal attorneys then challenged the ruling at the Fifth Circuit court of appeal.
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Appellate judges Edith Jones, Dana Douglas and Don Willett rejected the idea NBA YoungBoy “retained a property interest” in the footage because he had say so over which video snippets were handed over to Atlantic Records—his former label—or shared publicly. They agreed he didn’t own Ramsey’s camera or memory card and never produced a written contract or any evidence showing he had ownership of the footage. All three said NBA YoungBoy failed to “prove a reasonable expectation of keeping the footage” because he gave a third party permission to film him and keep the recordings.
“[NBA YoungBoy] had to know that Ramsey or anyone else involved in the editing and fashioning of his videos to upload to YouTube or (give) the record company would be witnesses to footage of his personal life,” Jones wrote in Friday’s (July 14) reversal. “Yet the record shows no precautions taken by [NBA YoungBoy] to control third-party access or to control how Ramsey used or stored the memory cards.”
NBA YoungBoy he was arrested in Los Angeles in March 2021 on the federal indictment from Baton Rouge. Police alleged they found a .45-caliber pistol and 12 rounds of ammunition in his vehicle. That led to a separate federal gun case, but California jurors acquitted him last July following a three-day trial.
YoungBoy released his 20th independent mixtape, Richest Opp, in May and it debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 chart. Just three weeks prior, he’d dropped his sixth studio album, Don’t Try This at Home, which debuted at No. 5.