ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said her office is helping to make our streets safer from gang violence.
Willis told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne that if she had it to do over again, she would still bring the same massive YSL indictment.
“There were lives lost and their lives that matter, and as long as I’m the DA, no matter your socioeconomic status, or your race, your life is going to have value if you’re harmed in this community,” Willis said.
Willis said she has no regrets about electing to bring the massive YSL gang racketeering indictment, she said it’s the kind of thing she was elected to do.
“Do I have any regrets about the YSL case?” Winne asked Willis.
“Obviously when you try a case, you go back and you look at things and you always have a Monday morning quarterbacking analysis,” Willis said.
“I think that any unbiased observer, having watched this YSL case, can’t believe that this indictment of the alleged YSL gang was a good decision,” defense attorney Doug Weinstein said.
RELATED STORIES:
- Charges being dropped against YSL defendants who had their cases severed
- ‘We are sisterly at this point:’ YSL jurors describe spending nearly 2 years on trial
- ‘Extremely long:’ YSL jurors ready to return to normal lives after spending nearly 2 years on trial
- Rapper Yak Gotti stabbed at Fulton County jail annex
Willis said she plans to move forward with the case against the five remaining YSL defendants.
“I’m not going to get into the details of that case. As you know, I have five defendants pending,” Willis said.
Despite a not-guilty verdict on all charges recently against Deamonte Kendrick, aka rapper Yak Gotti, and a sentence for rap superstar Young Thug that let him hit the street the night he pled guilty, she is not backing off her aggressive pursuit of gang members in hundreds of cases because it has helped make local streets safer
“I think it gets lost on people that many people took responsibility for their parts in that case,” Willis said.
“Since June of 2022, we have had over 300 gang convictions ranging anywhere from criminal damage all the way up to a murder. We’ve had armed robberies, we’ve had shootings,” said Fulton County Gang Prosecution Chief Chris Sperry.
“The crime rate drop in Atlanta is totally consistent with the crime rate drop across the United States since 2022, since the fall of COVID,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein, one of the lawyers who represented Yak Gotti, said he bases his assertion about a widespread violent crime drop across the country on a detailed reading of a Crime and Justice news post reporting major city police chiefs say violent crime dropped last year in 69 cities.
“There’s plenty of cities where the crime rate has dropped more than Atlanta,” Weinstein said.
“We saw a 21% drop in homicides in Atlanta versus only 10.4% nationwide,” Sperry said.
Sperry said a prosecutor used video of a shooting to build a case in which Monday alleged YSL gang member Javonte Scrutchins pled guilty to shooting but not killing a man during an armed robbery.
Scrutchins took an Alford plea, which means a defendant does not admit he committed the crimes but there’s enough to convict him.
“YSL was not a gang,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein says people claiming YSL affiliation committed crimes but that doesn’t mean YSL is a gang.
“We’ve been prosecuting YSL gang members since before the YSL RICO and were going to continue to prosecute YSL gang members after the RICO,” Sperry said.
©2024 Cox Media Group
