Fani Willis may use Georgia’s RICO law more than any other DA. At what cost?

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has built a reputation for bringing complex cases, wielding Georgia’s powerful racketeering law as a cudgel that attorneys say can strike wide-ranging defendants but can also weigh down a case and the state’s entire judicial system.

Since taking office in 2021, Willis has brought 14 cases involving 130 people under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, making her likely the second-biggest user of the statute behind the state’s attorney general, according to case statistics analyzed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The AJC also found her office has secured 55 guilty pleas to RICO charges in that time period and that other cases are pending.

But after two of her highest-profile cases largely fell flat — the election interference case against President Donald Trump and the gang prosecution of rapper Young Thug — the district attorney is facing criticism from the legal community, even from some former prosecutors and law professors.

Some critics argue Willis’ office is overusing RICO, trying too many defendants at once and wasting time and resources they say could be better spent on more straightforward prosecutions. They note that her office secured only its first jury convictions on RICO charges this past summer — more than four years after she first took office.

Willis declined to be interviewed for this story.

But the AJC spoke with John Floyd, who is considered one of the top RICO experts in the state and was brought in to help put together most of Fulton County’s biggest criminal prosecutions, including the Trump and Young Thug cases.

Fulton County has spent more than $274,000 hiring Floyd for RICO consulting from May 2022 to June 2025, according to invoices acquired by the AJC.

Floyd defended Willis and said she had used the statute effectively over the years, starting with the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal trial.

“There was a lot of time to see it in use and I think that was a level of experience, personal experience, that many DA’s don’t have,” Floyd said of Willis’ work on the cheating scandal case.

He said some defense attorneys are also learning how to best defend clients charged in RICO cases. Although the YSL trial became the longest criminal trial in state history, Floyd said RICO can be an effective tool for prosecuting members of an alleged enterprise.

The federal RICO statute was developed under President Richard Nixon’s administration as a way to prosecute the Mafia because it allowed prosecutors to tie accused leadership to crime enterprises, even if they didn’t dirty their hands with some of the more violent work.

Georgia’s RICO law is more expansive than the federal statute, with less stringent requirements around accusing someone of benefiting from a scheme and allowing prosecutors to present certain evidence to jurors that wouldn’t otherwise be admissible.

The U.S. president and a Grammy-winning musician hardly fit the average description of a mobster, though. Instead, Georgia prosecutors like Willis have used the statute to rope in powerful people who are accused of pulling the strings of their alleged accomplices.

Willis also used RICO to peg rapper Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, with allegations of being the ringleader of a violent street gang, rather than just charging him with individual crimes.

Williams, for his part, pleaded no contest to the RICO charge and guilty to gang, drug and weapon charges. He was sentenced to 15 years of probation after getting credit for time served in jail and is currently mostly exiled from the Atlanta metro area.

Willis counts the prosecution as a win. That’s because 19 people ended up pleading guilty to at least one charge in the case, and the vast majority of those charged spent months or even years behind bars awaiting a resolution. Some defendants were already serving life in prison for separate convictions when they were indicted in May 2022.

Willis’ first three RICO wins came in a prosecution against a lesser known Atlanta rapper in July.

In that case, Willis’ office accused Cash Out of working with his mother and cousin to run a sex trafficking enterprise.

Cash Out, whose real name is Josh Michael Hakeem Gibson, was sentenced to the 20-year maximum for the RICO charge.

But he was also hit with a much harsher sentence of life plus 50 years for the rape and sex trafficking charges in the case, raising questions about whether the DA needed to use her office resources to bring RICO charges at all.

According to data provided by the DA’s office, Willis has brought 14 RICO indictments since taking office in 2021. Those cases wrap in around 130 defendants, 55 of whom have pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge, an analysis by the AJC found.

Few of the RICO defendants have actually taken their case to a jury. Of those, three were convicted — all from the Cash Out case. Two others — Deamonte Kendrick and Shannon Stillwell in the YSL case — were acquitted of RICO and murder counts.

There are 29 defendants with pending RICO charges in Fulton County, according to court records.

Former DeKalb District Attorney Robert James said Willis has used the statute “an awful lot,” even for the largest DA’s office in the state.

“Maybe there have been very legitimate reasons for using it,” he said. “All I can say is that they haven’t used it successfully a lot.”

Floyd said some RICO cases need to be prosecuted with multiple defendants, or else they won’t work.

“There are cases where it is more efficient to do it that way, and there are cases that it can only be done that way,” Floyd said.

Willis isn’t the only Georgia prosecutor with a proclivity for bringing RICO charges.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office has surpassed her, with prosecutors securing 20 RICO indictments since 2021, records show. Eight of those were brought by the office’s gang and human trafficking units, one by its organized retail crime unit, a cyberfraud case, and nine cases brought by the office’s public integrity and white collar crime unit.

Carr is also using the statute to prosecute 61 protesters who opposed the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in south DeKalb. Most of those charges could be dismissed, however, after a judge indicated the AG may not have had the authority to charge the activists without first getting approval from the governor.

Although Willis appears to use the statute at a higher clip than most other district attorneys, a DA in Middle Georgia has brought nearly as many RICO cases.

Since taking office in June 2020, Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney Marie Broder, a Republican, has obtained 13 RICO indictments, charging 299 total defendants, according to data provided by her office. Like Willis, Broder’s office has used RICO to go after gangs.

Other metro DAs have also brought charges using the statute.

In Cobb County, DA Sonya Allen indicted a former sheriff’s deputy in March for allegedly faking an illness to solicit gifts and donations, while Gwinnett DA Patsy Austin-Gatson recently indicted a former Lawrenceville gas utility official allegedly involved in a kickback scheme to pocket millions from city pipe-laying contracts.

In Gwinnett, which is similar in population to Fulton County, prosecutors have brought seven RICO cases since 2021, roping in 23 defendants. That office charges about 6,000 cases a year, according to a spokesperson.

And in DeKalb, DA Sherry Boston has also secured RICO indictments over the years against a couple accused of running a sex enterprise and a DeKalb police officer involved in a theft scheme. All three pleaded guilty to RICO charges there.

Large prosecutions with multiple defendants charged under RICO can put an additional strain on Fulton’s court docket and judges’ caseloads. It also results in people sitting at the troubled Fulton County jail for months awaiting their day in court, records show.

The YSL trial tied up defense attorneys and at least two Fulton judges for months, which meant they couldn’t take other cases or represent their clients in other matters, delaying cases across the state.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney noted that a complex RICO case can trigger delays and keep people in jail longer.