{"id":5609,"date":"2025-05-02T21:38:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T21:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lyrics-removed-in-new-murder-for-hire-indictment\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T21:38:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T21:38:04","slug":"lyrics-removed-in-new-murder-for-hire-indictment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lyrics-removed-in-new-murder-for-hire-indictment\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyrics Removed in New Murder-for-Hire Indictment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tF<\/span>ederal prosecutors have unveiled a new indictment against Lil Durk in his murder-for-hire case \u2014 only this time, they\u2019ve dropped all reference to lyrics that the star\u2019s lawyers had claimed were being unfairly weaponized against him.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new \u201csuperseding\u201d indictment, released Friday (May 2), came six months after prosecutors first charged the Chicago drill star (Durk Banks) with murder-for-hire, accusing him of ordering members of his Only the Family (OTF) crew to carry out a 2022 attack on rival rapper Quando Rondo that left another man dead.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough it added a new charge of stalking, Friday\u2019s new indictment is most notable for what it removed: Any mention of Durk\u2019s lyrics. Last month, his lawyers argued that the cited song was clearly unrelated to the shooting and had been unfairly used against him; in a social media post Wednesday (April 30), Durk\u2019s family said he was the latest rapper to be \u201ccriminalized for their creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn separate court filings on Friday, prosecutors acknowledged removing Durk\u2019s lyrics from the new indictment, but said the move would not weaken the case against him.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendant Banks has presented a false narrative that he is being prosecuted and detained because of his violent lyrics. This claim is, and has always been, baseless,\u201d prosecutors write. \u201cJust like every iteration of the indictment before it, the [new indictment] contains significant allegations that show defendant\u2019s alleged role in the execution-style murder of [the victim] on a busy street corner in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDurk\u2019s attorney, Drew Findling<\/strong>, filed his own response to the new indictment in court Friday, arguing that \u201cit appears that the government has conceded\u201d the \u201chotly contested\u201d dispute over the lyrics. He also noted that prosecutors had deleted another passage from the indictment that directly accused one of Durk\u2019s co-defendants of paying a bounty at Durk\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesman for the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment on the new indictment. Findling did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tDurk 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 his friend Lul Pab (Saviay\u2019a Robinson) killed in the crossfire.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn court filings, prosecutors have argued that Durk\u2019s OTF crew was not merely a well-publicized group of Chicago rappers, but a \u201chybrid organization\u201d that also functioned as a criminal gang to carry out violent acts at his behest. 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\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo back up that claim, prosecutors quoted lyrics from a song called \u201cWonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy\u201d that allegedly referenced the shooting. They claimed Durk \u201csought to commercialize\u201d Lul Pub\u2019s death by \u201crapping about his revenge\u201d on Rondo: \u201cTold me they got an addy (go, go)\/ Got location (go, go)\/ Green light (go, go, go, go, go),\u201d Durk raps in the track. \u201cLook on the news and see your son\/You screamin\u2019, \u201cNo, no\u201d (pu\u2013y).\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, Durk\u2019s lawyers sharply pushed back \u2014 arguing that \u201cWonderful Wayne\u201d could not have referenced the Rondo shooting because the rapper wrote and recorded his verses \u201cseven months before the incident even happened.\u201d Mockingly asking if the government was prosecuting Durk \u201con a theory of extra-sensory prescience,\u201d the star\u2019s lawyers called the lyric allegations \u201cfalse evidence\u201d that had been unfairly used to indict him and to deny him pre-trial release.<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of Friday\u2019s new indictment that dropped the lyrics, prosecutors had strongly defended their use of Durk\u2019s music. In a court filing earlier this week, the feds said he was not being prosecuted \u201cbecause of his lyrics,\u201d but suggested they might still be cited as evidence in the case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendant has repeatedly used his pulpit as a voice of violence, publicly rapped about paying for murders, hunting opponents with machineguns, \u2018bounty hunters\u2019 in Beverly Hills \u2014 and other lyrics that have a striking similarity to the modus operandi used to kill S.R.,\u201d the government wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s true that words have power, and that defendant\u2019s words about \u2018green lighting\u2019 violence and placing bounties may be admissions of criminal conduct. That is for a jury to decide.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal prosecutors have unveiled a new indictment against Lil Durk in his murder-for-hire case \u2014 only this time, they\u2019ve dropped all reference to lyrics that the star\u2019s lawyers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3447,2272,3892,2250],"class_list":["post-5609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-indictment","tag-lyrics","tag-murderforhire","tag-removed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}