Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of Young Thug has suffered a major blow after a star prosecution witness known as “Lil Woody,” whose real name is Kenneth Copeland, claimed he lied to detectives about the criminal activities of Young Thug, whose legal name is Jeffery Williams. The stunned prosecution now says it’s treating Mr. Copeland as a hostile witness. 

Mr. Copeland’s about face is just the latest wrench thrown into Ms. Willis’s sprawling racketeering trial of Mr. Williams and multiple co-defendants, which is now the longest-running trial in Georgia history. Mr. Williams is charged with ruthlessly presiding over a  murderous street gang in South Atlanta known as YSL, or Young Slime Life. The trial jury returned to its box on Monday after a six-week hiatus that was dominated by the recusal of two consecutive judges and installation of a third judge to oversee the troubled case.  

Mr. Copeland, a star prosecution witness, shocked the courtroom on Monday and Tuesday by backtracking on previous statements that he made to detectives regarding Mr. Williams’s involvement in the deadly shooting of a rival gang member, “Nut,” whose legal name was Donovan Thomas. Mr. Wood had been granted immunity for his testimony.

The 2015 murder of Thomas is a central tenet of Ms. Willis’s case against Mr. Williams and 27 others in a 56-count indictment for violations of Georgia’s racketeering laws — the same law that Ms. Willis is using to prosecute President Trump and several of his associates for their alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential vote in Georgia. 

Mr. Copeland repeatedly responded “I don’t recall” to questions about his previous sworn statements, claiming that told detectives “whatever they wanted to hear or whatever they wanted me to to say” in order to protect himself. Mr. Copeland also suggested that one of the detectives he spoke to likely believed everything he said because the official has “a brain the size of a squirrel brain.” 

“They want to hear about Thug, so I’m about to sit right here and gas them up,” he said on Tuesday. “I’m about to sit right here and say he killed 19 people, all types of stuff. I’m about to sit right here and make him look like the worst person on Earth, so that they could believe and let me go.”

“I would’ve told them anything to get them out of my face,” Mr. Copeland added, in a scene reminiscent of Frank Pantangeli’s Congressional testimony in the “Godfather Part II.”

On Tuesday, the witness further explained that he was motivated to pin crimes on Mr. Williams after the rap star released his song “Halftime” which included an incriminating line about Mr. Copeland: “Lil’ Woody pull up and pop at his noggin.” 

“I didn’t like him rapping about me,” Mr. Copeland said, describing how he retaliated by telling detectives false information about Mr. Williams. 

During Tuesday’s testimony the witness also denied that Young Slime Life is even a gang. 

“I was a 30 Deep gang member,” Mr. Copeland said before the jury. “You can’t say I was a YSL gang member. YSL was never considered a gang. Y’all are making it a gang.”

Mr. Williams’s defense has argued that the only thing Mr. Williams presides over is YSL Records, a recording label whose initials stand for “Young Stoner Life.” The defense also argues that Thug stands for “Truly Humble Under God.”

Over the course of the two court hearings, Mr. Copeland expressed his frustrations over the long-winded trial, repeatedly lashing out at the prosecution, calling out Ms. Willis and her prosecutors.

“I’m tired of y’all, because y’all know y’all wrong and y’all Black people doing this to us,” he said on Monday. 

During his second day before the jury, Mr. Copeland snapped at the prosecution for asking him the same questions “30,000 times already.” 

“I’m tired of answering these questions at this point. You keep asking me the same thing over and over and over and over,” he said.

The disappointing testimony was seen as a blow to the prosecution who had been counting on the witness to implicate Mr. Williams in the gang activity. 

“I think it’s devastating for the state,” trial attorney and legal expert, Tom Church, told Fox 5 Atlanta. “Right, Mr. Copeland, or Woody, as we know him now, was billed as the state’s star witness, and now he is imploding on the stand. And what’s remarkable is it seems to be intentional.” 

But former Fulton County prosecutor, Manny Arora, still believes that the prosecution can secure a conviction. “All is not lost for the government,” he told Fox 5 Atlanta. “I mean, there, if they can prove any of the two underlying crimes predicate acts, again, they can get 20 plus years in custody on these individuals.” 

Mr. Copeland did, however, admit to his involvement in a 2014 barbershop shooting which resulted in the hospitalization of its owner. 

The testimony marked an end to the trial’s nearly two-months hiatus after the initial judge on the case, Judge Ural Glanville, was forced to recuse himself from his post following an alleged “secret” meeting between himself and the prosecution and a key witness on the case. 

The trial took another turn when the judge who was chosen to replace Mr. Glanville, Judge Shakura Ingram, stepped down due to an illicit and inappropriate jailhouse relationship between her former courthouse deputy, Akeiba Stanley, and one of the case’s defendants, Christian Eppinger. 

The affair was discovered after the court investigated the laptop of one of Eppinger’s lawyers on suspicion that the accused cop-shooter co-defendant was using the device to communicate with other members of the YSL gang. While searching through the laptop they found incriminating messages between the defendant and Ms. Stanley. 

Judge Ingram thus stepped down from the case to avoid creating an “appearance of impropriety,” she said. 

Soon thereafter, a new judge, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, was assigned to take over the trial which has so far spanned nearly two years.

The trial, which officially commenced in November 2023 after a 10-month jury selection, has drawn media attention for its soap-opera-like twists and turns including the arrests of a juror and a lawyer, the stabbing of a defendant, elicit romance, and others. 

The rapper at the center of the case, Mr. Williams, has been kept in jail without bond since he was arrested in 2022. 

Monday’s testimony marks Judge Whitaker’s first court session in front of a jury and comes just a few weeks after she rebuffed calls for mistrial on the basis of judge substitution brought by the lawyers for one of Mr. Williams’s co-defendants, Quamarvious Nichols, who goes by “Qua,” and whose lawyer argued that it would be “impossible” for her to catch up on the 19-months of court proceedings. 

Judge Whitaker denied the motion, adding, “I absolutely intend to familiarize myself with what has gone on in this trial prior to me getting involved in it, I’ve already begun to.”