After coming under fire for not securing any murder convictions in the YSL RICO case, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis stood her ground on the overall effectiveness of her team on Thursday.
“Crime is down,” Willis said during an interview with 11Alive in the lobby of Atlanta City Hall. “What my constituents say, who just voted [for] me by 68%, is, ‘She’s doing an amazing job.’”
Her answer was in response to being questioned directly about her team’s inability to secure murder convictions for any of the eight defendants who were charged with murder in the sprawling racketeering case that began three years ago.
Read More: After Fani Willis Drops YSL Murder Charge, Defendant Is Sentenced to 5 Years
Demise McMullen, the final defendant facing a murder charge, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in court Thursday. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop the murder charges against him.
McMullen is the seventh out of eight to plead guilty to a lesser charge.
Last week, Damekion Garlington was sentenced to five years in prison by a Fulton County Superior Court judge. He was originally facing life in prison if convicted on all charges — including murder and attempted murder — but he entered into an Alford plea with the district attorney’s office. An Alford plea allows a defendant to maintain their innocence while admitting the prosecution likely has enough evidence to secure a conviction.
In exchange for prosecutors agreeing to downgrade the murder charge to aggravated assault and drop the attempted murder charge, the 29-year-old pleaded guilty.
Garlington had been Willis’ last hope to hold one of the four people charged with the 2022 murder of Shymel Drinks accountable. Drinks was central to the prosecution’s argument that Atlanta rapper Young Thug and 27 others were members of a criminal street gang called YSL. Last year, Willis’ team dropped murder charges against Miles Farley and Quamarvious Nichols, two of the three other defendants charged with Drinks’ murder, in exchange for guilty pleas on lesser charges. The third, Shannon Stillwell, was found not guilty in early December.
Critics had honed in on the resources and manpower spent to prosecute this one case throughout the trial, which only exacerbated the issues with the case backlog that began during the 2020 pandemic.
“My message to taxpayers is, it was an amazing time. We had 19 convictions. The community is safer. We made sure that we got the resolutions we want. If they’re unhappy with sentencing, they should elect other judges,” Willis said.
Despite the district attorney’s office asking for 20-year sentences to be served, the majority of defendants were sentenced to just a few years in jail and 10 to 15 years on probation.
Willis, however, maintains that the case was a success, and pointed out that seven of the people she declined to prosecute are already serving life sentences after being convicted of other crimes.
Read More: State NAACP Calls for Appeal in Fatal Atlanta Police Shooting After Judge Drops Charges
Over the past few years, Willis has faced praise and criticism for her aggressive use of Georgia’s RICO law, which she also employed to prosecute President Donald Trump and his associates on allegations of attempting to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. With the Trump trial on hold until 2029, and the YSL case likely to conclude with all convictions coming from guilty pleas instead of guilty verdicts, Willis’ most successful RICO case remains the Atlanta cheating scandal trial.
Until it was usurped by YSL proceedings, the trial against Atlanta Public Schools’ teachers and administrators was the longest trial in Georgia history and ended with 34 convictions for Willis, then an assistant district attorney. She secured 12 guilty pleas and 11 guilty verdicts.
