22-Year old YNW Melly, born Jamell Demons, is currently incarcerated awaiting trial for allegedly taking part in the murders of his friends Anthony "YNW Sakchaser" Williams & Christopher "YNW Juvy" Thomas Jr. in a 2018 shooting.
Cortlen “YNW Bortlen” Henry is the other defendant in the case.
In 2020, Broward County, Florida prosecutors introduced a video they claim came from Melly's phone, where he confessed to the shootings.
On Monday, November 1, Melly's lawyer, Raven Liberty, released a statement denying her client admitted to anything:
"Both in & out of court, Broward County prosecutors have frequently referred to a video taken on an iPhone as a ‘confession’ by Jamell Demons, the artist known as YNW Melly. It’s clear prosecutors believe this is a key piece of evidence in their case.
In reality, this so-called ‘confession’ video features Melly doing what many music fans do: repeating the lyrics of a favorite song by one of his favorite artists, the song ‘4:30 AM’ by Kevin Gates. Thousands of similar videos are uploaded daily to platforms like TikTok, YouTube & Instagram.
Whether due to cultural ignorance, a lack of investigative rigor, or purposeful deception, it appears police and prosecutors have centered their prosecution of extremely serious charges on an embarrassing, avoidable mistake.
Violent imagery in music is not new. For the prosecution to use this video in a criminal proceeding is as credible as using a video of someone singing Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ (‘I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die’) or Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (‘Mama, I killed a man/put a gun against his head/pulled my trigger, now he’s dead’) in a prosecution. The reliance on this legal gimmick—in effect, putting a specific type of music on trial—highlights the weakness of their case & the general lack of evidence. Moreover, the racial aspects of this type of misleading, selective prosecution are painfully obvious.
In closing, it is worth highlighting that despite playing this so-called ‘confession’ video in court and citing it in public court documents, the prosecution has repeatedly failed to share a copy of the video in the discovery process as required under law."
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