A federal judge refused to split Lil Durk’s case from his co-defendants, keeping all four men on track for an August trial date.
Lil Durk will not get his day in court any sooner — and he won’t face it alone.
A federal judge has denied a request from three of the rapper’s co-defendants to break their cases away from his. The ruling keeps all four men tied together for a single trial now set to begin Aug. 20, pushing the Grammy-winning artist’s wait even longer as he remains behind bars without bail.
Durk, born Durk Banks, has been in custody since his October 2024 arrest. His trial had once been scheduled for April but was moved, in part due to a scheduling conflict involving an attorney for one of the other defendants.
Now, with the latest ruling, there is no separating the cases.
In a written order issued Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald said the four men — Banks, Deandre Dontrell Wilson, Asa Houston and David Brian Lindsey — were indicted as part of the same alleged conspiracy.
Because most of the evidence would apply to all of them, the judge said it made sense to try them together for the sake of “judicial efficiency.”
The judge acknowledged concerns that certain evidence might focus more heavily on Banks than on the other three men. But he said that risk could be managed through clear instructions to jurors, guiding them on how to weigh the evidence separately for each defendant.
“None of that evidence is so egregious or voluminous that it would prevent the jury from making a reliable judgment,” the judge wrote.
The severance request had gained strength earlier in the case when prosecutors were still arguing that a 2022 Chicago killing was part of a separate murder-for-hire scheme allegedly linked to Banks.
However, prosecutors later dropped that claim, weakening the argument that the cases were too different to be heard together.
Banks has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing him of arranging a murder-for-hire plot. Prosecutors claim he used coded language to direct alleged hitmen to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles and carry out a daytime shooting on Aug. 19, 2022.
According to the government, the intended target was rapper Quando Rondo, born Tyquian Terrel Bowman. Prosecutors allege Banks blamed Bowman for the 2020 shooting death of his friend and fellow rapper King Von, born Dayvon Bennett.
Authorities say gunmen tracked Bowman to Los Angeles and opened fire at a gas station near the Beverly Center, shooting at least 18 rounds, including from a machine gun.
Bowman was not killed, but his cousin, Saviay’a Robinson, was struck and died at the scene.
Defense attorneys for the co-defendants argued that the prosecution’s case paints a sweeping “multi-year narrative of violence” that has little to do with their clients.
Craig Harbaugh, representing Wilson, claimed jurors would struggle to separate evidence tied specifically to Banks from evidence against the other men.
The judge disagreed, stating that jurors are capable of weighing evidence carefully when properly instructed.
In a separate decision issued the same day, the judge also denied Banks’ request for a more detailed charging document. His lawyers had argued that the indictment was too vague and that shifting accounts from cooperating witnesses could lead to surprises at trial.
The court ruled that the existing indictment and disclosures were sufficient to explain the government’s case.
For now, all four defendants remain on a shared legal track. With no bail granted and no separate trials approved, the focus shifts to August — when a jury will decide what happens next.
