Lil Durk death penalty ruled out in murder-for-hire case
Lil Durk will not be facing the death penalty in his murder-for-hire case. Court documents were filed on June 2nd, notifying that the Attorney General for the United States had directed the United States Attorney for the Central District of California not to seek the death penalty.
The ‘Signed to the Streets’ rapper (real name Durk Banks) was arrested in October in connection with the death of Quando Rondo’s cousin, Saviay’a ‘Lul Pab’ Robinson, in 2022. He’s accused of paying five men to travel to California to kill Rondo, resulting in Robinson’s death at a Beverly Hills petrol station.
According to reporter Meghann Cuniff, the latest bail hearing was attended by Robinson’s mother, who travelled to Los Angeles, California, from Savannah, Georgia, and said she “fears for her life.”
Durk was charged with one count of conspiracy, one count of use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire resulting in death, and one count of using, carrying, and discharging firearms and a machine gun and possession of such firearms in furtherance of a crime of violence resulting in death.
The indictment added two felony charges against Durk after he was previously charged via criminal complaint. His trial is scheduled to begin on October 14th, 2025, and he could face up to life in prison.
Durk was recently denied bail after showing “a disrespect for the rules” by using other inmates’ phone accounts to make more calls than permitted. His lawyer, Drew Findling, has called out the government for using the artist’s lyrics against him as evidence in the case.
“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,” he said. “That claim is demonstrably false.”
He continued, “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.”