EXCLUSIVE: YNW Melly’s Ex Who Went Ghost During His Murder Trial Is Now Demanding Her Freedom Back

Mariah Hamilton is asking a Broward County court to remove her ankle monitor, claiming prosecutors lied to get the order signed.

YNW Melly‘s ex-girlfriend is fighting to get off house arrest as the double murder case around the Florida rapper keeps adding new chapters.

Mariah Hamilton is begging a Broward County court to terminate her pretrial supervision and ankle monitoring. Hamilton and Melly were in a relationship when the 2018 killings took place, and prosecutors have long wanted her on the stand.

Attorney Tino Gonzalez argues that prosecutors told the court Hamilton was served with a subpoena for Melly’s first trial and failed to appear.

That claim, Gonazalez, says, was the same falsehood used to get Hamilton arrested as a material witness. He said the supposed subpoena has never been produced for Hamilton’s defense to examine.

The prosecution has never contacted Hamilton or her attorney for an interview, yet still claims she’s a material witness.

“Despite having labeled Ms. Hamilton as a ‘material witness’, it seems as if the prosecutor is not at all interested in her testimony,” Gonzalez said.

He asked how prosecutors can call Hamilton a material witness when they’ve never spoken with her once. According to Gonzalez, the ankle monitor wasn’t there to secure Hamilton’s testimony at all.

Gonzalez said it was “obtained by a fraud upon this Honorable Court.”

“Ms. Hamilton has been deprived of her freedoms based on the prosecutor’s misrepresentations that she had been served with a subpoena to testify at the first trial of this case but failed to appear,” Gonzalez explained.

Hamilton’s legal troubles go back to January 26, 2025, when she was arrested at Miami-Dade after re-entering the United States from abroad.

According to AllHipHop, a warrant was issued after she failed to appear at Melly’s first trial. That trial ended in a hung jury in July 2023. Hamilton told Law & Crime she was threatened by investigators at her home: “I was 17, about to turn 18.”

As for Melly, the case grinds on with no relief in sight.

His bond was denied a fourth time in May 2026 by Judge Martin Fein, who ruled that he would remain in Broward County Jail until retrial.

Prosecutors dismissed all witness tampering charges on January 20, 2026, one day before jury selection was set to begin in that case. Cortlen Henry, Melly’s co-defendant, took a plea deal in September 2025 and was sentenced to 10 years on reduced charges.

YNW Melly has spent more than seven years in pretrial detention without a conviction. His lawyers described years of solitary confinement that they say makes Melly’s situation worse than what death row inmates endure.

Melly’s retrial for the 2018 murders of Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams and Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas Jr. is set for January 6, 2027.

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