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 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.