Courts and Crime
The new trial date will take place eight years after the rapper was arrested in the case
YNW Melly, born Jamell Demons, was denied bond again in his long-delayed double murder case. Judge Martin Fein ruled on Wednesday, May 6, that the rapper, who has spent more than seven years incarcerated without a verdict, will behind bars ahead of trial.
“The Court, the State Attorney’s Office, and all who observed this bond hearing should have been deeply troubled by the clear evidence presented regarding the inhumane conditions Mr. Demons has endured for over seven years — including the last three in solitary confinement — while still presumed innocent under our Constitution,” Demons’ lawyers Drew Findling and Carey Haughwout said in a statement. “Yet the Court denied bond and allowed those conditions to continue without even acknowledging the shocking circumstances under which he has been forced to live.”
His attorneys called Demons’ treatment “cruel and extreme,” and expressed “disbelief and outrage at the conditions imposed in this case.” They continued, “Unfortunately, it now appears that only a jury verdict compelling his release will bring an end to the years of unnecessary and unjust punishment he has already suffered.”
Demons stood trial in 2023 on two counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors accused Demons of fatally shooting his longtime friends Anthony Williams and Christopher Thomas Jr. on Oct. 26, 2018, and then conspiring with another man, Cortlen Henry, to stage a drive-by shooting. Demons pleaded not guilty and could have faced the death penalty if convicted as charged.
The artist’s 2023 double-murder trial ended with a hung jury. The murder case previously was set for retrial in October 2023 and then September 2025, but it was postponed over evidence issues. Demons’ double-murder retrial is now set for January 2027, which will take place eight years after the rapper was arrested in the case.
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