Rapper Durk “Lil Durk” Banks’ mugshot out of Florida and a surveillance image the prosecutors say shows the hitmen he hired.
A murder-for-hire case against a prominent rap artist could begin in late April after a judge on Wednesday rejected a motion to dismiss the case or recuse the entire Los Angeles federal bench because death threats against the bail hearing judge weren’t disclosed to defense attorneys for several months.
“There is just absolutely no basis for this motion. Just none. Absolutely none,” U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald said.
Durk “Lil Durk” Banks’ lawyers asked for an evidentiary hearing about their request for dismissal or for Fitzgerald to disqualify the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles from the prosecution as well as all judges in the Central District of California.
They also opposed three codefendants’ agreement with prosecutors to delay the trial from Jan. 21 to May 4, which Fitzgerald said was partly helped by his decision to schedule trial to begin either April 21 or April 28.
Their evidentiary hearing request was based on what they alleged was the “concealment” of four threatening voicemails U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue received in February and one Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello received in April.
Donahue’s name was publicly associated with Banks’ case because she denied Banks bail in December 2024. After the threats, she again denied Banks bail on May 8.
Prosecutors told Banks’ lawyers of the threats on Oct. 1 when discussing pre-trial motions, and they cited them in a request for an anonymous jury.
The lead FBI agent in the murder-for-hire investigation investigated the threats, and the U.S. Marshals Service contacted Donahue’s chambers and the prosecutors’ office.
Banks’ lawyer Drew Findling of Atlanta said in court Wednesday that on his team, “nobody has heard of a case where there was apparently a death threat to a sitting judge and the government does not turn around and tell counsel, you should know before this goes forward that this took place.”
Findling questioned whether prosecutors believed the threats would help ensure Donahue didn’t grant Banks bail during the second hearing.
“That lingering question will haunt this case like the proverbial Sword of Damocles unless we have that evidentiary hearing,” said Findling, who represents Banks with his law partner Marissa Goldberg, as well as Jonathan Brayman of Breen & Pugh in Chicago and Christy O’Connor, a solo practitioner in Los Angeles.
Yanneillo called the motion “stunning in respect to its factual inaccuracy” and “stunning in the extraordinary relief it seeks.”
“Any claim that the government tactically withheld this information is false,” Yanneillo said. “There was no conversation about whether to produce or not produce this information before we all decided it became relevant.”
Yanniello said “anybody who’s worked for a judge” or in public service knows “these things happen far too often.” The idea that somebody “would be impartial based on an anonymous call” is wrong, he said.
Findling’s motion says prosecutors had “ex parte communications” with judges about the threats when the marshals were the ones who actually discussed the threats with them.
“It’s a fantastical statement, and it just infects their entire motion, and it’s categorically wrong, and they haven’t retracted it,” Yanniello said.
This excerpt from Banks’ motion describes the threats against Judge Donahue.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel H. Weiner said prosecutors didn’t cite the threats in their request for an anonymous jury because they believe they’re credible; they cited them because they demonstrated “that the publicity in this case has already garnered outside spectators who attempt to influence the proceeding.”
“That’s why they became relevant. They were not relevant before that, and the government stands by that analysis,” Weiner said.
Weiner said the defense is basically saying they “didn’t have the opportunity to file a frivolous recusal motion in May that, as this court recognized, would have been rejected out of hand by Judge Donahue.”
O’Connor began her argument by acknowledging “the tone of Mr. Weiner’s argument” then telling Judge Fitzgerald, “I understand that this motion is upsetting to the government.”
“The allegations and the questions that we raise, I think, are properly submitted,” she said.
But Judge Fitzgerald agreed the motion had no merit and said, “There has been zero prejudice whatsoever.”
“It cannot possibly have affected Judge Donahue or me or any other judge that some hothead who has an interest in the music industry did something stupid,” he said.
The judge said threats are “regrettably something that happens” and no one suggested Banks had anything to do with the voicemails to Donahue or Yanneillo.
“It’s seldom that I have such a different view of a request, which clearly the defense cares very much about and takes very seriously,” said Fitzgerald, a 2012 Barack Obama appointee.
He said an evidentiary hearing “would inevitably result in a probing of work product” regarding prosecutors, and “legally, there’s nothing that has happened here which could possibly” justify a hearing.
The threats were “none of your business … until the government decided that it wanted to have used them for a purpose in court.”
“You think it would have been more professional to have received notice of this. Whether or not that’s true, that is simply not a basis to recuse anyone,” Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald has not yet ruled on prosecutors’ request to impanel a jury anonymously, but he said he’ll likely allow the identities of the jurors to be known only to attorneys.
Banks — who’s 33, based in Chicago and won a Grammy in 2024 for his song “All My Life” — has been in jail since October 2024, accused of offering a bounty for the murder of rapper Tyquian Terrel “Quando Rondo” Bowman after Bowman’s associate shot and killed Banks friend at an Atlanta nightclub on Nov. 6, 2020.
The indictment alleges Banks and codefendants Kavon London Grant, Keith Jones, Deandre Dontrell Wilson, Asa “Boogie” Houston and David Brian Lindsey traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles in August 2022.
Jones and Grant were not in court on Wednesday and have not joined in the pre-trial motions like the other defendants.
According to the indictment, Houston was driving an Infiniti with Jones, Lindsey and an unnamed coconspirator inside when Jones, Lindsey and the other man jumped out with guns and opened fire on Bowman’s black Escalade at a gas station on Beverly Boulevard.
The gunfire killed Bowman’s cousin Saviay’a Robinson.
The indictment includes surveillance images of the pursuit and shooting:
In the Jan. 5 stipulation to continue the trial, prosecutors acknowledged the case’s complexity.
“Due to the nature of the prosecution and the number of defendants, including the charges in the indictment and the voluminous discovery, this case is so unusual and so complex that it is unreasonable to expect adequate preparation for pretrial proceedings or for the trial itself within the Speedy Trial Act time limits,” they wrote.
Banks and his codefendants are 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.
Judge Fitzgerald is considering a motion to dismiss the fourth count that argues the two crimes prosecutors used as predicates — murder for hire and stalking — aren’t crimes of violence under federal law. Prosecutors in response said they would no longer use murder for hire as a basis for the charge but said the charge still was supported by the stalking statute regarding “fear of death or serious injury.”
The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on Dec. 10 that cyberstalking resulting in death is not a crime of violence under federal law when it is based on inflicting emotional distress.
The ruling reversed a Northern District of Texas ruling and noted that jurors were not instructed to indicate which element they found — emotional distress versus reasonable fear of death/injury – when they decided the charge. Prosecutors had cited the case when opposing dismissal, and defense lawyers argued the 5th Circuit ruling supports their dismissal request.
But the 5th Circuit didn’t address whether the fear of death or injury offense qualifies as a crime of violence, and prosecutors argued Judge Fitzgerald still can find that it is.
The judge said Wednesday that the 5th Circuit, which is based in Texas, “has regrettably chosen not to answer the question that would have most definitively been helpful.”
Banks’ lawyers also asked Judge Fitzgerald to dismiss the indictment for vagueness or to order prosecutors to issue a “bill of particulars” that better details the allegations.
The judge during a Nov. 18 hearing “encouraged the government to just provide anything it had and be as specific as possible” to try to moot the motion. Yanneillo said Wednesday the defense’s requests essentially amount to “a draft of what the government’s closing argument would be.”
“We are not required to provide that,” he said.
Fitzgerald told prosecutors to “respond in writing” by the Feb. 9 hearing and he’ll consider the motion then.
Wilson also has a pending motion to sever his trial from his codefendants. His lawyer, Craig Harbaugh, filed it under seal. The judge said he may consider that motion on Feb. 9, too.
Also pending is a sealed motion from Banks’ lawyers to exclude proposed evidence prosecutors want to use under Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Wilson has joined in the motion.
Harbaugh said Wednesday that prosecutors have identified four songs by Wilson they want to use as evidence, which he’ll oppose in another motion.
Judge Fitzgerald also scheduled a status conference for Feb. 9 regarding Banks’ incarceration in Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center’s Segregated Housing Unit, where he’s been held in solitary confinement since Aug. 29 because of “an allegation that he was in possession of an unauthorized Apple Watch.”
His lawyers said in a Jan. 7 filing they’ve “received conflicting explanations for his extended SHU detention without process.”
“For example, in October, an attorney for MDC told us that Mr. Banks’ high-profile/celebrity status is not the cause of his SHU detention. Then on December 22, the Warden represented to us that ‘[Mr. Banks’] presence in the general population poses a threat to the security and orderly running of the institution due to the high profile nature of Mr. Banks’ pending criminal case and possible violation of BOP’s disciplinary program,’” they wrote.
O’Connor said in court that Banks is alone in his cell 24 hours a day” and gets “a little bit of yard time Monday through Wednesday.”
“And so you can understand what that does to a person,” she said.
She visits him to discuss the case and “also just to keep him well to the extent I can.”
“And at times, I felt that we’re in some kind of dystopian alternate system where people don’t have rights, where people don’t have process. You have speedy trial rights when it comes to trial. But the spirit of that is really not being honored in this circumstance,” O’Connor said.
Another inmate found with an Apple Watch the same time as Banks “has been back in general population since October.”
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I’ve never seen somebody confined to the SHU as punishment for longer than 90 days,” O’Connor said.
Fitzgerald said he can’t “tell the warden how to run the Metropolitan Detention Center” but said because Banks is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, he has some authority, so he’ll discuss the issue more at the Feb. 9 status conference. He said he can contact the Bureau of Prisons’ regional counsel to determine “exactly what the concerns are … and we can figure out what’s going on here.”
Banks’ status conference on Feb. 9 is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. The other hearing is at 1:30 p.m.
Court documents:
Jan. 6 request for status hearing on Banks’ solitary confinement
count four:
Jan. 5 reply to supplment
Dec. 16 supplement
Nov. 10 reply in support
Oct. 27 opposition
Oct. 6 motion to dismiss
death threats
Dec. 22 reply in support
Dec. 8 opposition
Nov. 13 declaration
Nov. 13 motion to disqualify
vagueness
Nov. 10 reply in support
Oct. 27 opposition
Oct. 6 motion to dismiss
charges
May 1, 2025: 2nd superseding indictment
Oct. 17, 2024 1st indictment
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