Main image: Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural D. Glanville on June 18, 2024. Inset right: Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams (Law&Crime Network).
The chaos caused by the Fulton County judge overseeing Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams’ racketeering (RICO) case continues to unfold days after a controversial secret meeting between the court, the prosecution, and the state’s lead witness that excluded the defendants’ attorneys.
Now, several motions are taking aim at the judge over that secret meeting. One motion filed this week by Williams’ attorneys seeks to disqualify and remove Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural D. Glanville from the case entirely — echoing a similar recusal motion filed by another co-defendant last week.
Another motion filed by an attorney who did attend that infamous, closed-door meeting — who never represented a defendant in the case and who intends to no longer be involved in the case at all — takes the judge to task for how he responded after the secret got out.
“This court has failed to follow the lawful path,” the motion to recuse filed by defense attorneys Brian Steel and Keith Adams reads. “Instead, the court has unlawfully become the prosecutor, ‘Judge-Grand Jury,’ biased, partial, potential sentencer and thus, must be removed from this case, in toto, instanter.”
The lead-up
Here’s how we got to such striking allegations.
On the morning of June 10, state’s witness Kenneth “Lil Woody” Copeland was taken into a meeting with the judge, Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love, and several others. The subject of this ex parte meeting was Copeland’s prior decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and not testify the week before — a decision that resulted in a weekend’s worth of detention in the Fulton County Jail. Copeland changed course and has been on the witness stand since.
Beyond that, however, what exactly happened during the meeting — and, specifically, what made Copeland change his mind — is necessarily a high point of contention in the case. The contours of that secret, ex parte meeting now threaten to blow up the yearslong prosecution.
Steel’s motion makes no bones about what the defense believes happened: “This includes, but is not limited to witness intimidation.”
“The court has joined the prosecutors’ team and is biased against Mr. Williams and favorable to the prosecutors as objectively demonstrated on June 10, 2024, as well as throughout the pendency of this case,” the defense filing reads.
To hear the defense tell it, Glanville, Love, prosecutor Simone Hylton, several members of the court’s security staff, two Fulton County District Attorney’s Office investigators, and the court reporter attended the ex parte meeting — along with Copeland and Copeland’s since-fired attorney Kayla Bumpus.
An affidavit attached to the recusal motion sums up the defense’s estimation of what occurred behind closed doors that day:
This court and the others met with Mr. Copeland for a lengthy period of time, the total ex parte “meeting” lasted for more than one (1) hour, approximately two (2) hours, with the above named people at the meeting at all or various times. Mr. Copeland continued to make known his assertion that he would not testify even in the face of being held in contempt and Order to testify under use immunity. This court and lawyer for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office Love and/or Hylton ignored Mr. Copeland’s decision and continued to declare to Mr. Copeland that he would be held in custody until he testifies or alternatively, if he persists in refusing to testify, he would be held in custody until not only Mr. Williams’ current trial resolves, but until all twenty six (26) indicted persons’ cases are resolved, whichever is longer. This court was a participant and was present during these admonitions/threats to Mr. Copeland. This is witness intimidation, coercion and the court has become a member of the prosecution team in assisting the prosecution to induce a material witness to testify.
Now, the defense intends to call Glanville, Love, and Hylton as witnesses during trial for “the jury to understand this ex parte meeting and determine demeanor and credibility,” the motion says.
“I’ve added this court (the judge) to the witness list. I plan on calling the court as a witness in the trial. I’ve added lawyers Hylton and Love…” #YoungThug attorney Brian Steel. pic.twitter.com/RUyBmcUYJY
— Cathy Russon (@cathyrusson) June 18, 2024
Notably, the defense filing also contains a motion for a mistrial and anticipates calling Glanville, Love, and Hylton as witnesses for any such hearing that results from the mistrial request as well.
The blow up
Of course, the fallout from the ex parte meeting is not limited to the defense’s gripes about it having occurred in the first place. After the meeting was brought up last Monday, the court, in vain, focused its own efforts on trying to ferret out who revealed the secret.
Steel, adamantly, declined to reveal his source — citing the attorney-work product privilege — and insisted the judge was in the wrong for excluding him and the other defense attorneys from the meeting.
“Mr. Steel, I still want to know how did you come upon this information?” the judge pressed. “Who told you?”
“What I want to know is: why wasn’t I there?” the attorney shot back.
Some six minutes into the abrasive colloquy, Glanville stood up and stormed out of the courtroom as Steel leveled an even more shocking would-be revelation: During the secret meeting, Copeland had allegedly admitted he was the person responsible for the drive-by shooting that took the life of Donovan Thomas Jr. on Sept. 11, 2013 — the murder charge at the heart of the case and one of the eight crimes the lead defendant, Steel’s client, stands accused of committing.
Later on Monday, the contempt issue was revisited with famed defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant representing Steel.
The defense attorney’s defense attorney insisted her client was entitled to a hearing on criminal contempt — which the judge disputed. Merchant, however, offered a substantial amount of case law supporting the idea that criminal contempt requires a hearing and for the judge to recuse himself — which many Georgia legal experts on X (formerly Twitter) said was the correct understanding of the law.
Merchant argued the judge himself was now a potential witness in the contempt hearing that should have been called due to his having taken part in the ex parte meeting and “must” recuse himself. Glanville, for his part, said: “I’ll let an appellate court decide that.”
The aftermath
By the end of June 10, Steel was sentenced to 20 days in jail for criminal contempt — to be served on the weekends beginning June 14. Steel, in turn requested that he be able to share a cell with his client in order to continue his work on the complex case.
On June 11, Steel filed an emergency appeal motion of his contempt charge. On June 12, the Supreme Court of Georgia granted Steel a supersedeas bond — meaning Steel never did go to jail.
Also on June 11, Glanville filed an order to show cause — demanding that all participants of the secret meeting appear at a June 25 hearing in order to discuss “why one or more of them should not be held in contempt for disclosing information from the ex parte conversation to members of the Defense counsel.” That order singled out Copeland Bumpus — but only Copeland and Bumpus — by name.
Bumpus, in turn, filed a motion to quash late last week that was publicly docketed on Monday as well.
The attorney’s grievances largely take issue with the court’s position that revealing the details of the ex parte meeting was somehow untoward. Bumpus argues that the meeting did not discuss “secret, protected, or in any way privileged information.” She goes on to say that the court did not place the meeting under seal, that there was no standing order protecting what occurred, that no attorney-client privilege existed due to the sheer number of non-attorneys in attendance, and that Glanville “never stated, ruled, or inferred that the meeting was meant to be confidential.”
While mostly keyed toward keeping herself out of the crosshairs of contempt, Bumpus also takes stock of the meeting itself:
In chambers, this Court asked Copeland whether he was prepared to testify. Copeland announced that he planned to again invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege on the stand. A conversation among the parties ensued regarding Copeland’s understanding of immunity, how Copeland thought he may testify if he did not invoke the Fifth, and certain facts of the case. Once Copeland learned that he could be held indefinitely by the Court if he refused to testify (not just two years, as he initially believed), Copeland decided that he would testify. Copeland added that his testimony would be a lie. The meeting ended and the parties went to the courtroom.
Bumpus wants Glanville recused from the contempt issue as well.
“Here, the alleged contemptuous conduct was, as expressed by the Court, directed at least in part toward the Court personally and the ‘sacrosanct’ nature of its chambers,” the motion goes on. “The Court became involved in the controversy both by holding the ex parte meeting in the first place, and by way of the fact that this Court is a witness to the potentially disputed fact of whether there was any kind of order to not disclose the meeting to counsel for the Defense.”
On Tuesday, Glanville denied both motions to recuse.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
