YNW Melly warned to make a decision about keeping defense team

Rafael Olmeda, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Jan 7, 2025

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — YNW Melly must make a decision about whether to keep his current legal team for his upcoming murder retrial, and he doesn’t have a lot of time to do it, a Broward County judge said Tuesday.

The rapper, whose real name is Jamell Demons, was in court Tuesday for the second of a two-day “all pending motions” hearing, a proceeding in which lawyers are supposed to take care of any unfinished business stopping a trial from going forward. But the Demons trial has defied such predictability and continues to do so — the actual retrial won’t get underway until September, and a new “all pending motions” hearing was set for Feb. 18.

By then Broward Circuit Judge Martin Fein wants to know if Demons, 25, wants to keep his current legal team or go with a new one, which will have less than seven months to get up to speed on a murder case with the defendant’s life hanging in the balance.

Demons is charged with the 2018 murders of two men who had previously been among his closest friends, Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas and Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams, whose bodies were driven to Memorial Hospital Miramar riddled with bullets fired — according to prosecutors — by Demons.

His original trial on the murder charges ended in a hung jury in the summer of 2023, and legal wrangling since then has kept the case from being presented to a new jury. The lead investigator and the lead prosecutor both faced allegations of unethical conduct in the case, and the prosecutor was replaced.

Demons, meanwhile, has been hit with additional charges of witness tampering.

Now one of the lead defense lawyers, Raven Liberty, is under investigation for tampering herself. Defense lawyers are urging the judge to allow them time to review the allegations against Liberty, though no charges have been filed and such information is not typically released while the matter is under investigation.

Meanwhile, Judge Fein said, Demons has to decide whether an investigation against Liberty creates a conflict of interest in which she cannot defend herself without betraying the confidence of her client.

“At some point you’re going to need to decide who you want your lawyers to be,” Fein told Demons, who appeared in court Tuesday wearing a red Broward jail maximum security jumpsuit. Demons has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his rights are being violated by the restrictions placed on him during his pre-trial incarceration. Previous efforts to get him released from jail pending trial have been unsuccessful.

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