Lil Durk will remain in custody pending his October trial, at least for now.
In a new ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald declined to release the Grammy-winning rapper, born Durk Banks, on a new beefed-up bail proposal including $4.5 million cash and 24-hour home detention with electronic monitoring and private security.
“The main problem here is that, based on information in the sealed Pretrial Service Reports, the proffered funds are only a fraction of defendant’s net worth,” Judge Fitzgerald wrote in his five-page order. He said Banks is facing a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted, and such a possibility “would make any innocent defendant consider flight as the rational alternative.”
The judge also said that while he accepted the defense claim that Banks has “business and spiritual reasons to travel to the Middle East,” he saw no evidence explaining exactly why Banks bought tickets to Dubai shortly after other defendants were arrested in the case. “The court finds that defendant did attempt to flee abroad,” the judge wrote.
At a hearing last week, Judge Fitzgerald said the new proposal, which included an additional $3 million from the Chicago rapper’s own coffers, was “going in the right direction,” but it still wasn’t enough to satisfy him. The judge said he was looking for even more of the musician’s net worth on the line, possibly in the form of Banks’ “intellectual property rights in all of the music.” He said with the “entirety of his net worth” at stake, Banks would be less likely to flee because it would leave his wife, mother, and children “impoverished.”
Banks, 32, has pleaded not guilty to charges he hired a group of “hitmen” to travel to Los Angeles and commit an execution-style murder in broad daylight on Aug. 19, 2022. Federal prosecutors allege the intended target of the purported murder-for-hire scheme was Tyquian Terrel Bowman, also known as Quando Rondo. They allege Banks believed Bowman was involved in the death of his friend and protégé Dayvon “King Von” Bennett. Prosecutors claim the alleged hitmen stalked Bennett in Los Angeles and ambushed him at a gas station near the Beverly Center shopping mall, firing at least 18 rounds from multiple guns, including a machine gun. Bowman’s cousin, Saviay’a Robinson, was struck and killed as he traveled with Bowman.
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Banks vehemently denies the allegations and has been in custody since his arrest last October. When the the “All My Life” rapper appeared in a federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles on June 2, he couldn’t stop smiling at the group of more than two dozen supporters, including his parents, in the audience. His wife, India Royale, sat the front row.
Judge Fitzgerald listened as Banks’ lawyer Christy O’Connor argued that the defense deserved access to the secret grand jury testimony that led to the inclusion of some of Banks’ lyrics in his initial indictment in the case. Prosecutors initially alleged that Bank’s song “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy,” which was released in December 2022, referenced Banks’ alleged revenge on Bowman. In the song, Banks raps, “Look on the news and see your son, You screamin’, ‘No, no.’” Prosecutors claimed it was a reference to Bowman seeing Robinson’s dead body. At a prior bond hearing on Dec. 12, 2024, defense lawyer Drew Findling argued that the song was recorded months before the shooting. He offered a sworn declaration from the song’s producer, Justin Gibson, supporting the point.
“They didn’t do their homework. That’s bias that impeaches everybody,” O’Connor argued, referring to the prosecution. She said the inclusion of the lyrics in the prior indictment meant “there was false evidence or testimony presented to the grand jury.” She said it “undermined the credibility of the whole case.” (The lyrics were stripped from the second superseding indictment filed last month.)
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Findling also addressed the court last week, saying that the multiple “tranches of discovery” already handed over in the case failed to corroborate prosecutors’ claim that Banks orchestrated the murder-for-hire plot. He said the government seemed to be relying on a single text that Banks sent to an alleged co-conspirator on Aug. 18, 2022, the day before the shooting, in which he said: “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.” Findling said the text was vague and taken out of context.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello countered that the government has more evidence, but it was not yet required to turn it over. He cited the trial date set for October.
Judge Fitzgerald said it was possible that the assailants involved in the shooting simply wanted “to prove themselves” to Banks. “While it’s possible, perhaps plausible, that the defendant was pulling strings in an abstract manner, at some point, there has to be proof,” the judge said during the hearing. “Yes, it might be plausible that Mr. Banks was orchestrating all of this, but at the same time, it might be plausible that there were hot-headed people who wanted to impress him. At some point, you’ve got to come forward with specifics and not just generalities.”
Before the hearing ended, Robinson’s mother, Andrea Robinson, addressed the court. She said she flew in from Savannah, Georgia, to deliver her emotional message about the death of her only child.
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“I never in a million years thought I’d lose my baby,” Robinson’s mother said through tears. “He had a family. He has a mother. He has three kids. They will never know their dad. … It hurts so bad that I can’t pick up the phone and call him.”
Banks’ trial is set to begin Oct. 14. In a filing last week, prosecutors confirmed they would not be seeking the death penalty against any defendants in the case.
