Nancy Dillon
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Lil Durk on July 30, 2022, in Chicago's Grant Park. Raquel Zaldívar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images Lil Durk won a significant court victory Tuesday when a federal judge agreed to separate newly filed racketeering charges from his upcoming trial over allegations he ordered a killing that resulted in an August 2022 murder in Los Angeles.
In a brief ruling issued after a tense hearing, the judge said that a separate January 2022 killing in Chicago and an alleged February 2019 attempted murder in Atlanta would be off-limits at Durk’s Aug. 20 trial in downtown Los Angeles because prosecutors introduced them only last month, in a third superseding indictment. The judge said the related new counts — alleging violent crimes in aid of racketeering activity and firearms possession in furtherance of murder in aid of racketeering — would be severed for a subsequent trial.
“It has been and remains the court’s intention that the Los Angeles trial will include all admissible evidence that is not unduly prejudicial,” U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald wrote in his decision obtained by Rolling Stone. He said prosecutors “chose to withdraw evidence of the ‘Chicago incident'” from the Los Angeles trial earlier in the case, and they would have to live with that decision now that Banks and his lawyers spent so much time preparing their defense accordingly.
In court filings, the Grammy-winning rapper, born Durk Banks, and his lawyers said prosecutors blindsided them with the “sweeping new charges,” leaving too little time to prepare for trial. Banks has a constitutional right to a speedy trial, they said, and he doesn’t want any further delays. He’s been locked up without bail since his arrest in 2024.
“We are very happy with the court’s order,” Drew Findling, one of Durk’s defense lawyers, tells Rolling Stone. “For 21 months, we have been unwavering in our commitment to Mr. Banks and his innocence, and we look forward to an Aug. 20, 2026, trial.”
During the 40-minute hearing Tuesday, which Banks’ wife, India Royale, attended, Judge Fitzgerald pressed prosecutors on why they had waited so long to file charges related to the Jan. 27, 2022 killing of the alleged “rival gang member” in Chicago. Banks was not charged in that killing and has denied the government’s claim that he brought $1 million in cash to a music studio after the killing as a “monetary reward.”
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“If you felt so strongly, why not persist in getting a ruling from me that the Chicago incident should be brought before the jury [in the Los Angeles murder-for-hire case],” Judge Fitzgerald asked. He said prosecutors might have persuaded him that it was “inextricably linked” to their original charges claiming Banks ordered an August 2022 murder that ended with the death of Saviay’a Robinson in Los Angeles.
“This third superseding indictment, indisputably, is just a very clever attempt at having the Chicago tail wag the Los Angeles dog,” the judge said, cutting off an assistant U.S. attorney mid-argument at one point. He said it sounded like the government was worried it was “going to lose” if the racketeering charges were severed for a separate trial.
“You think you will have a better chance to win if the Chicago incident is tried with the Los Angeles murder. It’s obvious,” Judge Fitzgerald said. “You treat that as a feature, and I treat that as a bug. I’m concerned it’s going to be unfair. … I’m here to make sure both sides have a fair trial.”
Arguing to sever the racketeering allegations, Banks’ defense lawyer Christy O’Connor said the “All My Life” rapper was ready for his trial next month based on the second superseding indictment and did not want to wait. “He’s incarcerated. His businesses are suffering without him. His children are growing up without him. There is a cloud of aspersion over his good name,” she said.
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After the hearing, India blew kisses to Banks as he was led away, back into custody.
Banks, 33, was arrested in Florida in October 2024 and denies the government’s claims he used “coded language” to hire a group of alleged hitmen to travel to Los Angeles and carry out the execution-style killing of Robinson on Aug. 19, 2022. Federal prosecutors say the intended target was Robinson’s cousin, Tyquian Terrel Bowman, the rapper known as Quando Rondo. They say Banks allegedly blamed Bowman for the 2020 shooting death of his friend and protégé, Dayvon “King Von” Bennett.
Prosecutors allege that after Bennett’s death, Banks texted an alleged co-conspirator about it, writing, “I can’t let this slide … I ain’t letting shit slide … [Bennett] dying turning me [into] a different animal.”
In the June indictment, prosecutors alleged that Banks conspired with several other men to kill Bowman after a concert near Blackshear, Georgia, on May 21, 2021. The indictment claimed the men attacked Bowman using firearms outside a gas station, but Bowman survived.
According to prosecutors, a group of gunmen tracked Bowman to Los Angeles in 2022, then stalked and ambushed him at a gas station near the Beverly Center, firing at least 18 rounds from multiple weapons, including a machine gun. Robinson was struck and killed while standing outside a black Escalade, authorities said.
Robinson’s mother, Andrea Robinson, addressed the court at a hearing last year, saying she was distraught over the death of her only child.
