Lil Durk’s murder-for-hire case will not go to trial until April, but prosecutors gave a sneak preview this week when they revealed they have a witness ready to testify that the rapper gave “music opportunities” to affiliates of his OTF crew who had participated in the 2022 shooting incident that resulted in the death of Quando Rondo’s cousin, Saviay'a Robinson.
The disclosure came about in a document filed on Friday (Feb. 6) as part of an back-and-forth over whether the rapper’s lyrics and videos will be allowed as evidence during the trial.
Durk is accused of ordering the shooting, which prosecutors say was intended as a hit on Rondo, and offering a “bounty” to people who participated. One of the feds’ main arguments for including music videos as evidence in the case is their allegation that part of the bounty was “prominent placement” in videos.
The inclusion of some OTF affiliates who allegedly participated in the Robinson killing “proves the downstream benefits rewarded to the conspirators involved in the murder scheme, including prominent placement in music videos following [Robinson’s] murder,” prosecutors wrote in a document filed late last month.
Durk’s team pushed back hard on this, calling the argument a “a thinly-veiled attempt” to include evidence that shouldn’t be allowed.
“Not one government witness has ever said that his motive to commit murder was to be featured in music videos or rap songs,” they wrote in a response filed earlier this week.
Lawyers insisted that the feds’ filing contains no evidence that the people who appeared in the videos understood their appearances as payment for murder.
“[T]he government never alleged, before mid-January, that these (or any) music videos or rap lyrics were the consideration that Mr. Banks promised or paid in exchange for the murder, or that the expectation of these features were the motivation to commit the murder,” they wrote. “It … appears that these newfangled allegations are the inventions of the prosecutors’ imaginations.”
In response to that pushback, prosecutors shared their news about the likely witness in an attempt to bolster their claim that the videos should be allowed.
“[T]he government expect a witness will testify that the witness’s music opportunities that occurred after [Robinson’s] killing would not have occurred had the witness failed to participate in the Los Angeles murder,” they wrote.
Complex has reached out to Lil Durk’s attorney for comment, but he did not immediately respond.