OPINION: Fani Willis aimed high. But now her RICOs lie in the ditch

There’s a telling photo of Fulton County Judge Ural Glanville that speaks volumes.

Glanville, who until recently presided over the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case against rapper Young Thug and several codefendants, is shown with his elbows on the bench, his face planted into his palms. The image fittingly portrays the biting frustration that has emanated from that courtroom during the 19-month legal trudge that occurred until the trial was frozen in place.

Glanville was removed from the case Monday by a fellow Fulton judge and it remains in limbo until the lucky judge who ends up with the case decides what should occur. Start over and retry the case? Toss out the charges? Study up on the trial and start it back up?

Judge Glanville was removed after he allowed prosecutors to meet in his office with a reluctant witness without defense attorneys present. Those attorneys cried bloody murder, saying the witness was coerced into testifying. Glanville’s sin was to push back hard when defense lawyers asked him to recuse himself. He should have had another judge weigh the recusal motion.

“A judge who judges himself is no judge at all,” said Lester Tate, who used to chair Georgia’s Judicial Qualifications Commission. Last week, before Glanville was removed, Tate called the trial “a dumpster fire.”

And now, Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis has her two mega-cases (both RICOs) in hiatus status.

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The other case, of course, is the criminal RICO/election prosecution against former President Donald Trump and a host of his MAGA compadres. That case has been shunted off to the state Court of Appeals , which will decide if DA Willis should be disqualified.

The appeals court does not move quickly. It will hold oral arguments Dec. 5, meaning a trial (even if Willis wins the appeal) cannot be held before the November election. That means Trump will be either president and probably immune to prosecution for four years, or a twice-defeated has-been when the court releases a decision.

In the past, I have lauded Willis for her gumption, ambition and her wide range of prosecutions — from rappers to Republicans.

Last year, Willis boasted that gang cases and convictions were up, up, up and homicides were down.

A decade ago, she used the racketeering laws as the lead prosecutor in the Atlanta school test-cheating case, prosecuting teachers and administrators. She has said RICO, which ties defendants together to one overarching scheme, allows prosecutors “to tell the full story” about criminal enterprises.

Defense attorneys generally hate such prosecutions because the evidence often paints all the defendants with one sticky brush.

But there’s a downside to prosecutors — they are up against a room full of attorneys who can team up. That’s what happened in these cases.

The Trump case got sidelined after a defense attorney (not the ex-president’s) noted Willis’ past romance with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired for the case. The two of them testified and Judge Scott McAfee, who was hearing the case, ruled one of them had to go. Wade left but defense attorneys appealed that decision, arguing it should be Willis.

If she is removed, the case is essentially dead because no other DA is likely to raise their hand and say, “Gimme this legal monstrosity.”

Credit: TNS

Lawyers are split on employing RICO to prosecute crimes.

Robert James, the former DA in DeKalb County, said Willis was kind of stuck with the cases because alleged crimes occurred in her jurisdiction

“She didn’t ask for them; she had the courage of her conviction to go after them,” he said. “She’s a batter, not a pitcher. She has to swing at what comes her way.”

James seemed to be in a sporting mood because he then dusted off a boxing analogy, saying, “It’s gotten ugly like a lot of fights do. But the DA’s office is not knocked out. Fortunately, for her, the cases are in mothballs, not dead.”

Danny Porter, Gwinnett County’s DA for nearly 30 years, thinks the indictments were “too complex.”

“What (prosecutors) thought, especially in the Trump case, was that defendants would roll over (and testify against co-defendants). And largely, they have not. They thought that it has worked in the past. It was ‘Charge them all and let God sort it out.’ ”

I asked Porter if the new judge allows the Young Thug case to continue, will jurors punish the prosecution or defense? Remember, they’ve been empaneled since November and are now, like the case itself, “on mothballs.”

“They get mad at the system,” he said. “And the state represents the system.”

I called Suri Chadha Jimenez, a former Fulton assistant DA who once prosecuted Young Thug and who was the lawyer for a co-defendant in this trial. He was also part of one of the trial’s odder events: He got out of a contempt of court charge threatened by Glanville by buying fellow defense attorneys lunch. Chicken wings from the strip club Magic City .

Jimenez thinks the time away will affect jurors if they return.

“They were in a bubble for nine months (during the trial); they had a rhythm, a focus,” he said. “Now they’ve had weeks to get back to their regular lives.”

They won’t like being back.

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