Lil Durk wants a judge to dismiss murder-for-hire charges he’s facing over a 2022 shooting, claiming the feds gave “false evidence” to a grand jury by citing song lyrics that he wrote more than six months before the attack ever took place.
Prosecutors charged the Chicago drill star (Durk Banks) last year over allegations that ordered his “OTF” crew to murder rival Quando Rondo in – accusations they backed up by quoting lyrics from a song called “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy” that allegedly referenced the shooting.
But in a motion to dismiss the case filed Friday, Durk’s attorneys said those lyrics could not possibly have made mention of the Rondo shooting because the rapper wrote them “seven months before the incident even happened.”
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“The government told the grand jury that Mr. Banks, through specific lyrics in his music, celebrated and profited from a revenge murder that he had ordered,” writes Durk’s lawyer Drew Findling. “That claim is demonstrably false.”
The allegedly incriminating lyrics came as a feature on a track released by Babyface Ray in December 2022 – three months after the Rondo shooting. But in their motion this week, Durk’s lawyer say he recorded his verses in January and had no subsequent involvement in the song. They cited sworn affidavits from two music producers who worked on “Wonderful Wayne,” who both said Durk made no edits to the lyrics after the shooting.
“Unless the government is prosecuting Banks on a theory of extra-sensory prescience, the lyrics could not have soundly informed the grand jury’s finding of probable cause,” Findling writes.
The use of rap music as evidence in criminal cases is controversial, as critics argue it threatens free speech and can sway juries by tapping into racial biases. Over the past few years, the practice has drawn backlash from the music industry and led to efforts by lawmakers to stop it. But it has continued largely unabated, most notably in the recent criminal case against Young Thug in Atlanta, in which prosecutors made extensive use of his music.
Durk was arrested in October on murder-for-hire and gun charges related to the September 2022 shooting at a Los Angeles gas station, which left Rondo (Tyquian Bowman) unscathed but saw friend Lul Pab (Saviay’a Robinson) killed in the crossfire.
Prosecutors say Durk’s Only The Family crew was not merely a well-publicized group of Chicago rappers, but a “hybrid organization” that also functioned as a criminal gang to carry out violent acts “at the direction” of Durk. One of them was the Rondo attack, the feds say, allegedly carried out in retaliation for the 2020 killing of rapper King Von (Dayvon Bennett), a close friend of Durk’s.
“Banks put a monetary bounty out for an individual with whom Banks was feuding named T.B.,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment, referring to Rondo by his initials. “Banks ordered T.B.’s murder and the hitmen used Banks and OTF-related finances to carry out the murder.”
In addition to Durk, prosecutors have also charged several alleged OTF members — Kavon London Grant, Deandre Dontrell Wilson and Asa Houston — as well as two other alleged Chicago gang members named Keith Jones and David Brian Lindsey.
To support those claims, prosecutors alleged that Durk “sought to commercialize” Lul Pub’s death by “rapping about his revenge” on Rondo: “Told me they got an addy (go, go)/ Got location (go, go)/ Green light (go, go, go, go, go),” Durk raps in the track. “Look on the news and see your son/You screamin’, “No, no” (pu–y).”
But in Friday’s motion to dismiss, Durk’s lawyers say that accusation is “patently false,” and that including them in the indictment is the kind of “egregious” prosecutorial conduct that requires the judge to toss the case entirely.
“A prosecutor who knowingly secures an indictment based upon false information, or who allows a falsely obtained indictment to persist, routs the grand jury from its central protective function,” Findling writes. “That is clearly what happened here.”
Durk’s indictment also alleged that “Wonderful Wayne” makes direct reference to a news clip filmed shortly after the shooting, in which Rondo can be heard screaming “no, no!” after seeing Lul Pab’s dead body. But his lawyers now say those were internet edits posted to YouTube, and that the audio from the news broadcast was not used in the original.
“Mr. Banks did not create these videos, and the government has failed to show any nexus between these manufactured video clips and Mr. Banks,” Finding says. “The internet users who posted the videos … are apparent ‘fan pages’ maintained by people with no affiliation to Mr. Banks.”
Dismissing criminal charges at the outset is a drastic step that courts rarely take. But Durks’ attorneys say the lyrics were the “linchpin” to the case against him, forming one of only two pieces of evidence that was presented to the grand jury that issued the indictment.
“For the grand jury not to have been substantially influenced by that evidence in its decision to indict is inconceivable,” Findling writes.
