The high-profile racketeering case against Young Thug was assigned a new judge after the old one was removed, but the new judge is already off the case. According to local news coverage, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram was randomly assigned to the case on Monday (July 15), but today filed an Order of Recusal taking herself off the case.
Her reason for recusing herself was to avoid any appearance of favoritism or bias after it was revealed last June that her court deputy was involved in an inappropriate relationship with one of the YSL case’s co-defendants, Christian Eppinger. The former deputy had been assigned to Judge Ingram’s courtroom for almost six months by the time the relationship was discovered, and the deputy was arrested.
The deputy, identified by local news as Akeiba Stanley, was arrested after Fulton County deputies seized Eppinger’s attorney Eric Johnson’s laptop, after discovering it was being used to allow him to communicate with alleged YSL members not in custody. Stanley also allegedly used a phone to communicate with Eppinger, visited him in his jail cell, and tried to smuggle contraband into the jail for him.
Although Ingram maintained in her order that she didn’t think the connection constituted any “actual bias for or against any party to this case” (a pretty boilerplate response for this situation), she acknowledged that it could affect public perception. A new judge, Paige Reese Whitaker, has been assigned to the case. The prior one, Judge Ural Glanville, was recused after a third-party review following his order to hold Thug’s attorney Brian Steel in criminal contempt of court.