Chicago rap star Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Banks, is mounting a rigid challenge to the story that has kept him locked in a cell since last October. In a newly filed motion, Durk’s lawyers are asking a federal judge in Los Angeles to review the circumstances of his pretrial detention, which they say rest on unstable ground and bloated speculations on the part of the prosecution.
Central to the case is a murder-for-hire charge linked to the 2022 killing of Saviay’a “Lul Pabb” Robinson, a cousin of the rapper Quando Rondo. Durk is charged with funding a deadly trap in Los Angeles that killed Robinson in August 2022. But the rapper isn’t backing down, pleading not guilty and now making a new case and a large cash pile of $1 million to be freed until his trial.
In a new filing, his high-profile defense attorney, Drew Findling, takes issue with the “unfair, misleading, and flat-out wrong” evidence introduced in a December custody hearing. At the center of the debate is a song called “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy” by Babyface Ray featuring Durk. Prosecutors say the song contains coded concerns about the killing and even includes a news clip in which Quando Rondo can be heard screaming shortly after the shooting.
But Durk’s camp considers that connection fake. They contend that the verse in question was inscribed seven months before the tragic event unfolded. That is from a testimony by Justin Gibson, the song’s producer, submitted by the defense to clarify the timeline.
Findling did not mince words in the motion, criticizing the prosecution for implying that Durk had anything to do with fan-edited videos or that the rapper somehow profited from the massacre in his music. “It is patently unfair and misleading and just flat-out wrong for the government to suggest that Mr. Banks is somehow responsible for these video/audio edits, or that they evidence his apparent commercialization of a murder he allegedly ordered,” Findling said.
This new motion, coupled with a $1 million offer, has Durk hoping the judge will reassess the facts and produce an alternative to the account prosecutors have painted. For now, however, he’s still flagged in a cell while he fights, not only for his freedom but for the right to tell his side of the story unchecked by the shadows of misrepresented lyrics and home movies of Internet fans over the years that might haunt him in court.
With the hip-hop community waiting with baited breath, the question remains: Will the judge consider Durk’s latest effort a pursuit of justice or another couplet in a far more protracted saga?
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