FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Jamell Demons, the rapper known professionally as YNW Melly, is finally due back in court Dec. 5, but it won’t be to pick up where his murder retrial left off.

For that, the artist who calls himself “Melly the Menace” with a hit track “Murder on My Mind” will have to wait nearly a year, and even that assumes no more surprises in a case that has seen no shortage of them.

Demons, 25, has spent most of his adult life locked up in the Broward Main Jail, held without bond since his arrest for the murders of fellow rappers Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas and Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams. Prosecutors say Demons shot the men, his childhood friends, in Miramar early on Oct. 26, 2018, after a late-night recording session in Fort Lauderdale.

He faces the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.

Thursday’s hearing is not about the murder but about additional charges Demons is facing for alleged witness tampering. Prosecutors say Demons relayed messages to co-defendant Cortlen Henry through a fellow inmate, instructing Henry to talk Demons’ girlfriend out of giving a sworn statement or testifying against him.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal recently rejected a defense motion to dismiss those charges. The same court is considering a slew of appeals concerning what evidence may and may not be introduced when the murder retrial finally begins.

But the witness tampering allegations led to restrictions on Demons’ access to visitors and other inmates, giving rise to conditions that prompted Demons to file a federal lawsuit last month seeking his release while his cases are pending.

Demons’ first trial ended with a hung jury in July 2023, setting the stage for a retrial.

According to prosecutors, Demons was a passenger in a Jeep, seated behind Henry, who was the driver. Expert testimony at trial established that the victims were shot from inside the vehicle, and that the shooter was sitting where Demons sat when they left the Fort Lauderdale recording studio.

Henry drove the victims to a Miramar hospital, where they were pronounced dead. Demons was not with him, and defense lawyers say he had already left the vehicle when the shots were fired.

That could be interpreted to contradict a 20-minute video documentary Demons produced before the shooting and released after. The video contains a title card near the end that reads “Four days after the completion of this film, YNW Melly and his friends were the targets of a drive-by shooting in Miami, Florida.”

According to prosecutors, Demons and Henry drove the victims to an isolated area in western Miramar, stepped out of the Jeep and fired repeatedly into it to make it appear the slain rappers were the victims of a drive-by. Henry is charged with first-degree murder and as an accessory. His trial was set for September 2025, but that was before Demons’ retrial was penciled in to start the same month.

After the first trial, defense lawyers accused prosecutors of burying an accusation against the lead investigator in the case, Miramar Police Det. Mark Moretti. Defense lawyers say Moretti tried to recruit a Broward Sheriff’s deputy to lie about the execution of a search warrant on Demons’ mother. Moretti denied any intention to lie, and his official report did not contain any facts in dispute.

But the legal wranglings over the accusation led Broward Circuit Judge John Murphy to order the removal of the lead prosecutor from the case. Those accusations are likely to resurface when Moretti is called back to the stand in Demons’ retrial.

Murphy has since retired, and the case is now before Broward Circuit Judge Martin Fein, who has said he expects the retrial to get underway, finally, next September.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. Follow him on Threads.net/@rafael.olmeda.

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