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It is a RICORICORICOUS Your browser does not support the element.result that has the government licking its wounds. In May 2022 Fulton County prosecutors indicted 28 men from Cleveland Avenue, a rough part of Atlanta, for committing a string of killings, robberies and drug deals in service of a street gang led by Jeffery Williams, a rapper who goes by the name “Young Thug”. Over the past year the state presented a Georgia jury with nearly 200 witnesses and a barrage of rap verses that, it argued, proved that “YSL”, used to denote Mr Williams’s platinum-selling record label “Young Stoner Life”, also stood for “Young Slime Life” and was an affiliate of the notorious Bloods gang from Los Angeles. But when the alleged kingpin pleaded guilty in late October to overseeing crimes the judge chose to ignore the state’s recommendation to lock him up for decades, opting instead for 15 years probation and banishing him from Atlanta for ten.Then, on December 3rd, the jury acquitted the final two defendants left facing murder charges, bringing the longest trial in Georgia history to a close. Only a handful of those in the rapper’s entourage ended up with prison sentences. In an interview after the verdict jurors explained that the smoking gun the prosecutors promised simply never came. One said that the trial made her see Mr Williams as someone who “pulled himself up” and “tried to help other people around him”. She wished him nothing but “continued success”.This has done further damage to the reputation of Fani Willis, the district attorney at the case’s helm. As lead prosecutor in the state’s capital, Ms Willis rose to national fame last year when she charged Donald Trump and more than a dozen of his acolytes with election subversion. That case, which hinged on Mr Trump’s attempt to get Georgia officials to fudge the vote count, was considered to have real teeth.It began to unravel when it was revealed in January that Ms Willis had hired her then-boyfriend to take the case to trial. The judge said that her defence—she testified in court that she had paid her beau back in cash for their Caribbean holidays and therefore got no benefit from his salary—had an “odour of mendacity”. A congressional committee started investigating her use of funds and a conservative appeals court deliberated on whether to disqualify her from prosecuting Mr Trump (it is yet to rule). Those Democrats and Republicans who thought her case had merit were baffled by her sloppiness.Now that the second-biggest prosecution of her career has come to look like overreach, Ms Willis is losing allies. Together the two cases absorbed tremendous resources and left hundreds of other defendants waiting for trial in the Fulton County jail, whose conditions the federal government declared inhumane after ten people died in custody last year. In a county that is more black than white, that has reaffirmed mistrust in the criminal-justice system—and in Ms Willis, the top cop who oversees it. The district attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.Cynical observers reckon that Ms Willis prosecuted big-names to raise her profile and woo supporters so she can one day run for governor. The Trump case was for liberal Democrats and the Young Thug case was for law-and-order Republicans, says Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer who uncovered her love affair. Ms Willis’s remaining supporters argue that she was bravely chasing untouchable criminals with her best: both indictments were built on the state’s unusually broad Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations () Act, a law that Ms Willis had used effectively before, most notably to take down cheating schoolteachers.The statute gives prosecutors an edge by relaxing the rules on who can be charged and what evidence can be brought. “If you bring a case, almost everybody should be serving time,” says Chris Timmons, a former prosecutor who usually speaks out to defend the district attorney. A ring of elite criminal lawyers in Atlanta who once all supported Ms Willis say that the fact that both racketeering cases derailed, albeit for different reasons, shows that her ambition has clouded her judgment. “It’s Icarus,” says Jay Abt, a defence lawyer for one of the acquitted.Nonetheless, Ms Willis was elected to another four-year term in November. Her win was not surprising, given that Fulton County is a Democratic stronghold and her opponent was a Republican who had interned in Mr Trump’s White House. She did, however, trail Kamala Harris’s vote share. Since the Young Thug trial ended she has lost more trust, says Fred Hicks, a Democratic strategist. He reckons that “if she had to run again in a primary now she would have a very hard time.”Ms Willis said that she plans to stick around for eight more years “if that’s what it takes for us to get justice in some cases”. But re-election is no guarantee that she will keep her job. Last spring Georgia’s Republican legislature passed a law that allows a political committee to pluck rogue district attorneys from their posts, which Ms Willis called “racist”. It seems poised to try to remove her in January. Washington may also pounce in the new year. Mr Trump could have his Justice Department indict Ms Willis. Ms Merchant, the defence lawyer, thinks that he might go after her for honest-services fraud, a federal crime used to charge public servants who take kickbacks. And if Mr Trump is indeed set on revenge against his perceived persecutors, he might even see if he can take it in the form of a case.
