Lil Durk’s long-awaited criminal trial began Monday with prosecutors portraying the Grammy-winning rapper as the architect of a deadly revenge plot, while his lawyers cast him as an innocent man being falsely served up as the “big fish” by a desperate co-defendant angling for a lighter prison sentence.
Lil Durk, born Durk Banks, sat at the defence table as his lawyer, Marissa Goldberg, said Kavon Grant was initially identified by authorities as the one “in charge” of the deadly shooting. She said that when authorities busted down Grant’s door in October 2024, he realised his “only way out of jail” was to “minimise his own involvement” and give them someone bigger.
“They were pressing him about a big fish, and he thought, ‘Oh man…I’ve got an insurance policy,” Goldberg told jurors Monday. She said Grant, who worked for Banks at his music management company, Astronaut Soundz, had access to a company credit card and told investigators that he had booked travel for the group of alleged hitmen at Banks’s direction. Goldberg said that account was false.
“Mr. Banks had nothing to do with it. He was not there. He had nothing to do with it,” she told the jury in a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. She said Grant was the one who organised the deadly ambush at the centre of the trial for his own personal reasons. He was the one who bought the shooters black ski masks at R.E.I., and procured the plane tickets, hotel accommodations, and vehicles, she said.
Banks, 33, has pleaded not guilty to five charges, including conspiracy, stalking resulting in death, and murder for hire. Federal prosecutors allege he used “coded language” to dispatch a group of men to Los Angeles to carry out an execution-style hit in broad daylight on Aug. 19, 2022. They say the intended target was Tyquian Terrel Bowman, a rival performer also known as Quando Rondo. They allege Banks wanted retribution after a member of Bowman’s entourage carried out the 2020 shooting death of Banks’ close friend and protégé King Von, born Dayvon Bennett.
Prosecutors claim the alleged hitmen stalked Bowman 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, also known as Lul Pab, was struck and killed as he stood outside Bowman’s 2018 Cadillac Escalade at the Mobil station.
Goldberg said Monday that Grant had the deepest personal motive, noting that his father and King Von’s father “went back decades,” making their sons extraordinarily “tight.” Grant personally managed King Von in Atlanta and was the one who “frantically” rushed him to the hospital as the rapper was “bleeding out” in the backseat after the 2020 shooting. Goldberg said Grant was traumatised when the “beloved” performer died and was left “floundering” in the aftermath. He was the one consumed by the urge to strike back, she argued, whereas Banks “channelled” his anger and frustration into “his artwork” instead.
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“This is a case about revenge, stalking, and premeditated murder,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Weiner said in his duelling opening on Monday. He told the jurors that Grant already has pleaded guilty in the case and would testify against Banks. He said two other alleged co-conspirators also took plea deals and were cooperating, identifying the men as Kacey “OTF Jam” Hester and Keith Jones, identified as one of the shooters outside the Beverly Center.
Weiner showed jurors surveillance video of the brazen daylight shooting and at one point put a blue title card up on the screens in the courtroom along with the single word, “Revenge.” He said Banks and his two co-defendants at trial, Deondre Wilson and David Lindsey, separately travelled to Los Angeles along with other men involved in the shooting to “hunt and kill” Quando Rondo, fatally striking Robinson instead. He claimed Banks was calling the shots as both the wealthy leader of his record label, Only The Family, and a subgroup of OTF he claimed was “involved in criminality.”
Jurors saw a text message Banks sent Grant on Aug. 18, 2022, a day before the shooting in Los Angeles, in which Banks wrote, “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.” Weiner said Banks had learned Quando Rondo was visiting Los Angeles and had determined it was “time to get back” at him, while he was a “vulnerable fish out of water in a city not his own.”
Weiner told jurors the evidence would show that Banks was the one “consumed with revenge” and that he “deployed” Hester, known as “OTF Jam,” as one of the shooters. He then pointed to a group text message from Aug. 4, 2023, in which Banks allegedly warned others that Hester could not be trusted.
“Jam just ready to snitch … He gone tell soon,” the text said. Banks continued, “As long as we don’t break they can tell em what ever.”
The judge previously ruled jurors can hear lyrics from several of Banks’ songs, including “Pissed Me Off,” “Who Want Smoke??” and “Ahhh Ha,” in which he rapped, “Don’t respond to shit with Von. I’m like ‘Fuck it, you trippin’, go get your gun. They droppin’ locations, I’m gettin’ it done. Fuck tweeting, we slidin’, the feds are comin’.”
The use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials is controversial, with critics saying the practice chills creative expression and allows prosecutors to distort hyperbolic art in ways that reinforce racist stereotypes.
From Rolling Stone US
