YNW Melly must remain in jail before retrial, judge orders

Shira Moolten, South Florida Sun Sentinel on May 13, 2025

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida rapper YNW Melly must remain behind bars until his double murder retrial, a has judge ordered.

In a March motion, Melly, whose legal name is Jamell Demons, had sought release for the second time since his 2023 trial ended in a hung jury. By that point, he had been imprisoned for more than 2,000 days, his attorneys said, since his arrest in 2019.

Demons, a rising star in the rap world at the time, is accused of suddenly shooting his friends, Christopher “Juvy” Thomas Jr. and Anthony “Sakchaser” Williams, inside a Jeep after an overnight recording session in Fort Lauderdale on Oct. 26, 2018.

In the motion for bond, Demons’ attorneys argued that he was the subject of “extreme mental abuse at the hands of the Broward Sheriff’s Office,” and has “not had any contact with the outside world” in three years, including his family, issues also raised in a federal lawsuit his attorneys filed last year. He had also been forbidden from talking to other inmates, they said.

Judge Martin Fein had deferred ruling after a lengthy hearing last week over the motion for bond.

In his order on Monday, he concluded that prosecutors had sufficiently established evidence of Demons’ guilt in the murders of his friends.

“State’s evidence is arguably sufficient to convict and is not contradicted in a material respect such that there is a substantial question of fact as to the guilt or innocence of the Defendant,” the order concludes.

Melly had previously been denied bond in 2023, following the mistrial. Fein’s order referred to that decision, in which Judge John Murphy concluded that the lack of a unanimous decision in the trial did not “alter the nature or weight of the evidence of Defendant’s guilt.”

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Sun Sentinel staff writer Rafael Olmeda contributed to this report.

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