Prosecutors have dropped witness-tampering charges against YNW Melly on the day a trial was set to begin, prompting the rapper’s lawyers to vow renewed efforts to free him from jail after nearly seven years behind bars awaiting a murder trial.
The “Murder on My Mind” rapper (born Jamell Maurice Demons) had been scheduled to face jurors in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., this week over claims that he pressured his girlfriend, Mariah Hamilton, not to testify in his murder case. But on Tuesday (Jan. 20), as jury selection was set to begin, the state’s attorney’s office dropped the charges.
The rapper is still facing those original murder charges over accusations that he and another man shot and killed his close friends Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams and Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas, Jr. in 2018. A trial was recently postponed until January 2027, nearly eight years after he was first charged.
But Melly’s lawyers say he should await that trial out of jail, where he’s been incarcerated since his 2019 arrest. In a statement to Billboard on Tuesday, Drew Findling and Carey Haughwout, who took over his case in August, said it had become “immediately apparent” to them when they reviewed the tampering charges that “no crimes had occurred.”
“Unfortunately, for 652 days while these charges were pending, the state did not reach the same conclusion until the cusp of trial,” Findling and Haughwout said. “We now look forward to seeking Mr. Demons’ release from custody, where he has been held under extraordinarily restrictive conditions for far too long based on premises the state has now abandoned. His release will allow him to fully and meaningfully participate in preparing his defense in the forthcoming proceedings, which we intend to litigate vigorously.”
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In court filings obtained by Billboard explaining why the case was dropped, prosecutors blamed it on the judge — specifically his decision to defer ruling on whether key jailhouse phone calls would be admitted as evidence in the trial. Those calls, in which Melly associates allegedly plotted the witness tampering, were “critical evidence” and the case “cannot go forward” without them, prosecutors wrote.
Once a fast-rising hip-hop star, Melly was charged in February 2019 with the grisly YNW double murder. Prosecutors say Demons and Cortlen “YNW Bortlen” Henry carried out the killings inside a car after a Ft. Lauderdale recording session, then staged a drive-by shooting to make it look like the pair of friends had been murdered by others.
Melly has long maintained his innocence, but the case has been endlessly delayed — first by COVID-19, then by a long-running death penalty appeal, then by a hung-jury mistrial, and most recently by another appeal over evidence. Last year, the judge postponed the trial until January 2027 — a stunning further delay in the slow-moving case.
In September, Henry agreed to plead no contest to four lesser counts in the case, including accessory after the fact and witness tampering. In exchange, prosecutors dropped the two first-degree murder charges, and a judge later sentenced him to 10 years in prison, followed by six years on probation — far less than the multiple life sentences he was facing if convicted.
