The Broward County State Attorney’s office will have to find a new prosecutor in the double murder case against rapper YNW Melly.
A judge on Thursday granted the defense’s motion to recuse Assistant State Attorney Kristine Bradley, who has led the state’s five-year probe in the high-profile case. The judge didn't find that Bradley's integrity had been comprised but agreed that she couldn't serve as a prosecutor on the case if the defense was planning to call her as a witness regarding the credibility of one of the investigators.
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The defense also asked the judge to bar the entire Broward County State Attorney’s Office, but that request was denied.
Melly was back in court Friday morning for another hearing where defense attorneys brought a motion to dismiss the case before Judge John Murphy.
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Murphy deferred the motion and didn't say when he would make a decision.
Prosecutors said Friday that they were still deciding who would take over the case, and Murphy gave them until Tuesday to select a new prosecutor.
The motion to recuse Bradley stemmed from an alleged Brady violation, which relates to the disclosure of information or evidence in a trial. Defense attorneys claimed that prosecutors concealed how the lead detective in the case asked a deputy to lie about how a search warrant was served.
YNW Melly trial
Assistant State Attorney Michelle Boutros, who works for the Broward office, testified Friday that she overheard Miramar Police Detective Mark Moretti, lead investigator in the case against the rapper — whose real name is Jamell Demons — ask a Broward County deputy to lie about being present when Moretti executed a search warrant outside his jurisdiction last October, forcibly seizing a phone from Demons' mother as part of a witness tampering investigation.
Defense attorney Jamie Benjamin said that information should have been turned over to the defense because they could have used it to discredit Moretti during Demons’ recent murder trial, which ended in July with a hung jury.
Prosecutors say the exchange between Moretti and the deputy was a joke, pointing to the fact that an attorney for Demons' mother was present when her phone was taken and would have known the deputy wasn't there.
The state and the detective deny any wrongdoing.
The judge also ruled that the state attorney cannot be called to testify about the alleged Brady violation.
Jury selection in the retrial of the 24-year-old rapper was set to start this week, but the judge pushed it back a week on Friday and set hearings to deal with the obstruction allegations.
Melly faces a possible death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder in the 2018 slayings of two childhood friends, Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas and Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams. Their stage names all include “YNW” because they belonged to the same hip-hop collective. It stands for “Young New Wave” or another phrase that includes a racial slur.
Prosecutors say Melly, after a late-night recording session, shot Thomas and Williams inside an SUV and he and Cortlen “YNW Bortlen” Henry then tried to make it look like a drive-by shooting. Melly remains jailed without bond. His biggest hit, “Murder on My Mind,” reached No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2019.
