The Atlanta judge overseeing Young Thug ’s gang trial held the rapper’s attorney in criminal contempt of court Monday (June 10) in a bizarre episode centered on claims of a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness. After attorney Brian Steel argued that the so-called ex parte meeting involved the improper coercion of a sworn witness, Judge Ural Glanville repeatedly demanded that Steel divulge who had informed him about a private meeting in his chambers. “If you don’t tell me how you got this information, you and I are going to have problems.
” Steel refused to do so, saying that it had been the meeting itself that was the problem. “You’re not supposed to have communication with a witness who’s been sworn,” he told the judge. During the meeting, Steel said he had been told, prosecutors and the judge had pressed the witness, Kenneth Copeland, to testify by saying he could be held in jail for an extended period of time if he did not.
“If that’s true, what this is is coercion, witness intimidation,” Steel told Glanville, arguing that defense counsel should have been notified of a meeting involving a sworn witness and that it was grounds for a mistrial. After Steel continued to refuse to share where he received the information, Glanville held him in contempt and eventually ordered him taken into custody. As he was escorted out of the courtroom, into custody, Steel told the judge that Thug did not wish to proceed without his attorney pr.
