Georgia's longest-ever trial ended Tuesday when the last two defendants in the case involving rapper Young Thug were found not guilty of participating in a criminal street gang, Courthouse News reports. After about 16 hours of deliberations over four days, a jury acquitted Shannon Stillwell and Deamonte Kendrick of the most serious charges they faced, including racketeering and murder. Stillwell was found not guilty on all charges, except for illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Stillwell faced charges over the murder of Shymel Drinks, which prosecutors had accused Stillwell of committing along with three other people on March 14, 2022. He was sentenced to the maximum 10 years on the firearm count, with two credited for time served and the remaining on probation. Drinks' family rushed out of the courtroom after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker read the verdict.
Deamonte Kendrick was found not guilty on all charges. Kendrick, who raps under the name Yak Gotti, was arrested during a raid of Young Thug’s Atlanta home in May 2022. He and Stillwell faced murder charges over the fatal drive-by shooting of Donovan "Nut" Thomas outside of an Atlanta barber shop in January 2015. Prosecutors argued that Thomas was a rival gang member, showing jurors surveillance footage of the defendants gathered at a nearby Texaco gas station on the night of the murder. They also claimed the Infiniti sedan used in the fatal shooting had been rented under Young Thug’s name — Jeffrey Williams. The verdict comes two days after Kendrick was stabbed during a “physical altercation” with another inmate at a Fulton County jail annex where he was being held, according to his attorney. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, whose jail is under federal investigation for severe civil rights violations, said it is investigating the incident. In December 2023, Stillwell was also stabbed at the Fulton County Jail, delaying the trial for about a month.
Members of the prosecution team, who spent nearly two years trying the case after a decade of investigation into the purported gang itself, appeared stunned as the verdict was read.
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