Georgia Supreme Court upholds murder convictions of two former Young Slime Life defendants

Jozsef Papp, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Jan 28, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

ATLANTA — Two former “Young Slime Life” defendants can’t escape a previous murder conviction, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

Damone Blalock and Rodalius Ryan were convicted in October 2019 on murder charges in the death of Jamari Holmes. They were both sentenced to life in prison.

Later, the pair were indicted along with Atlanta rapper Young Thug in May 2022 on charges accusing them of violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act as part of prosecutors’ allegations of a widespread gang-related conspiracy in what would eventually lead to the state’s longest trial. The Holmes murder was one of the more than 190 overt acts prosecutors alleged members of YSL committed in furtherance of the gang.

Both appealed their 2019 murder convictions, contending their trial counsel was ineffective, after they failed to move to strike a witness’ testimony after they invoked their right against self-incrimination in front of the jury. They said their counsel also failed to object to the trial court’s charge on how the jury should assess the invocation of that right by the witness.

They also contended their attorneys did not object to the trial court’s response to a jury question about how they were to interpret the invocation of the Fifth Amendment by the witness.

The court noted that defense attorneys used the witness’ testimony rather than objecting to it, finding that was “an objectively reasonable trial strategy and provided no basis for deficiency.” The court also said some of the answers given by the witness actually helped the defense, so it was not an “objectively unreasonable strategy to forgo objecting and moving to strike” the witness’ testimony.

Blalock and Ryan also argued that their attorneys failed to introduce Instagram messages that could have helped in their defense, but the high court found that the pair hadn’t shown the messages would have changed the result of the trial.

As a result, the two “have not shown the requisite prejudice to support their claim of ineffective assistance,” the court wrote.

In the YSL case, Ryan entered a negotiated guilty plea on Oct. 30, 2024, on a single RICO charge and was sentenced to 10 years in prison commuted to time served. Ryan was the youngest of the YSL defendants and was 15 when Holmes was killed.

Blalock, who faced only one charge for violating the state’s RICO act, had his charges dropped along with other defendants after former co-defendants Shannon Stillwell and Deamonte Kendrick were acquitted of almost all of their charges.

_____