Peach Tree Times

Rappers Young Thug and Gunna will face trial in a large RICO case early next year, a recent report from FOX 5 Atlanta said.

Jury selection is slated to begin on Jan. 5, 2023.

Young Thug and Gunna, known formally as Jeffery Williams and Sergio Kitchens, respectively, have both been sitting behind bars along with 23 other co-defendants awaiting trial since being taken into custody on a slew of charges earlier this year; the FOX 5 report said.

In an 88-page indictment, both Williams and Kitchens are accused of being part of the Young Slime Life, or YSL, a subset of the Bloods street gang. Prosecutors further allege that all those named in the indictment have engaged in violent criminal activity in the city over the last decade.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, was developed to fight organized crime; the report said. 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.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked the court to delay the trial until March 2023, citing the fact that more than a quarter of the suspects did not have attorneys yet; the report said.