Local rap stars Young Thug and Gunna are now set to go on trial in a large RICO case early next year, with jury selection slated to commence on Jan. 5, according to a recent report by FOX 5 Atlanta.
Young Thug and Gunna’s real names are Jeffery Williams and Sergio Kitchens, and both have been sitting behind bars along with 23 other co-defendants waiting for trial since being taken into custody on a slew of charges earlier this year, the report states.
In an 88-page indictment, both Young Thug and Gunna are accused of being part of the Young Slime Life, or YSL, a subset of the Bloods street gang, with prosecutors further alleging that all those named in the indictment have engaged in violent criminal activity in the city over the last decade.
According to the report, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, was developed to fight organized crime and since being enacted in 1970 the Justice Department has used RICO to dismantle multiple crime families and weed out corruption in several city police departments.
The delayed trial comes as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked the court to push it until March 2023, citing the fact that more than a quarter of the suspects did not have attorneys yet, FOX 5 Reports.
