Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk sat in a Los Angeles federal courtroom Wednesday as a judge agreed to delay his murder-for-hire trial for at least three months at the request of several co-defendants.
The defendants asked to push the start of the trial from Jan. 20 to May 4, but the judge declined to set a firm date, citing scheduling conflicts. He said the trial could begin as early as April 21 or April 28. Lawyers discussed the possible dates after the hearing. Three of Durk’s five co-defendants told the court they needed the additional time to review discovery and prepare for trial. Durk did not join the request.
“We would have been ready to try the case (in two weeks), but the court appropriately decided that with everybody together, we still aren’t there yet,” Drew Findling, one of Durk’s lawyers, tells Rolling Stone. “It’s a complex case. These are the stepping stones towards a trial.”
Durk, whose legal name is Durk Banks, appeared in court with a short haircut, a departure from his signature dreadlocks. He blew kisses at his wife, India Royale, who sat in the gallery. His lawyers told the court that jail officials have been keeping Banks in solitary confinement without a disciplinary review after he allegedly was caught with an Apple Watch last August. They said he’s alone in a tiny cell 23 hours a day with no visitation, and they’re worried about his psychological well-being. The judge set a status hearing on the issue for Feb. 9.
Banks, 33, has pleaded not guilty to charges he offered a bounty for the murder of Tyquian Terrel Bowman, a Georgia rapper known as Quando Rondo, setting in motion an armed ambush at a gas station near the Beverly Center mall that led to the shooting death of Bowman’s cousin on Aug. 19, 2022. Prosecutors say Banks wanted Bowman dead because he considered him responsible for the 2020 shooting death of Banks’ friend and protégé Dayvon “King Von” Bennett.
Through his lawyers, Banks has denied offering money to the purported hitmen who allegedly fired 18 rounds from multiple guns, including a machine gun, killing the cousin, Saviay’a Robinson, near a black Escalade linked to Bowman. Banks’ defense has panned the government’s case, claiming prosecutors have relied on the testimony of a cooperating witness with a changing story.
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In a court filing, Banks’ defense argued that a man identified as “Prosecution Witness-1” initially asserted there was no bounty at all, that he did not agree to murder Bowman for money, “and that he did so under duress.” They claimed the man later rose “to meet the occasion” and told investigators that a co-defendant in the case, Deandre Dontrell Wilson, allegedly stayed behind in Los Angeles after the shooting to collect the “bounty” for distribution. The defense argued prosecutors must have realized the man “lied” because their first superseding indictment alleged that Wilson agreed to distribute the alleged bounty, while their second superseding indictment deleted that claim.
The defense also chipped away at the government’s case when they previously produced evidence showing that Banks’ 2022 song “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy” was recorded months before the shooting. Prosecutors had included some of the song’s lyrics in their First Superseding Indictment, claiming they were proof Banks was trying to commercialize the deadly shooting. In the song, Banks raps, “Look on the news and see your son, You screamin’, ‘No, no.’” Prosecutors suggested it was a reference to Bowman seeing Robinson’s body. But at a bond hearing on Dec. 12, 2024, Findling offered a sworn declaration from the song’s producer, Justin Gibson, saying the song was finished before the shooting. The government’s reference to the lyrics was dropped from the Second Superseding Indictment.
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For their part, prosecutors have defended their case. On Wednesday, they defeated a defense request for an evidentiary hearing probing why prosecutors waited months to tell defense lawyers that a prior judge had received phone threats while she was overseeing an early phase of the case. Findling said the hearing was necessary to answer “lingering questions that will haunt this case.”
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U.S. District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald disagreed, saying it was an instance where “some hothead who has an interest in the music industry did something stupid.” He said the court deals with that sort of thing all the time, and there was no outstanding fact about the incident that could have been the “basis to disqualify anyone.”
“It’s just regrettably something that happens,” Judge Fitzgerald said, referring to the anonymous threats.
