The rapper Lil Durk, born Durk Banks, was acquitted Friday on federal charges that he plotted to kill a rival in an ambush shooting that instead resulted in the death of another man. The decision closed the highly watched saga that had at its center a Grammy-winning rapper with two No. 1 albums.
Jurors deliberated for three days before finding Mr. Banks not guilty on five total counts, including stalking and orchestrating a murder for hire in the 2022 death of Saviay’a Robinson in Los Angeles. Mr. Banks could have faced a life sentence.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Banks, 33, ordered a hit on the rapper Tyquian Bowman, known as Quando Rondo, and facilitated the attack by paying for flights, cars, cellphones and ski masks. Mr. Bowman had been involved in a 2020 fight that ended with the shooting death of Mr. Banks’s close friend Dayvon Bennett, the rapper known as King Von, in Atlanta.
Prosecutors said Mr. Banks had been “consumed with revenge” in the years after, and felt pressured by social media posts that urged him to retaliate, or “slide for Von.” In their account, he organized associates from his Only the Family rap label to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles in pursuit of their target in 2022.
The prosecution’s argument hinged on the testimony of three associates of Mr. Banks, including two who were initially charged as co-defendants. Those men, Kavon Grant and Keith Jones, each said that Mr. Banks had offered cash — Mr. Jones said the amount was $1 million — for the murder of Mr. Bowman.
A third associate, Kacey Hester, who was arrested on a separate gun charge and struck a plea deal to cooperate in the case, testified that he had been a shooter in the attack and was lured by Mr. Banks’s monetary offer. The bounty motivated the men to coordinate an attack, they testified, with some trailing him by car for hours before opening fire at a Los Angeles gas station. All three men testified that Mr. Banks did not participate in the shooting and never paid them for it.
“No one is saying that he was on the ground with a gun in his hand in Los Angeles,” Ian Yanniello, a prosecutor, said of Mr. Banks in closing arguments, “but this story doesn’t happen without him, and it doesn’t make sense without his leadership.”
The defense, led by the high-powered lawyers Brian Steel, Drew Findling, Christy O’Connor and Marissa Goldberg, who have represented the rappers NBA YoungBoy, Lil Nas X and Young Thug, pointed to Mr. Grant, a cousin of Mr. Bennett’s, as the mastermind in the shooting. A close friend of Mr. Banks, he knew Mr. Banks’s Social Security number and had access to his bank accounts and credit cards that were used to buy flights for Only the Family associates.
Ryan Green, a close friend of Mr. Banks’s, testified about a conversation he had with Mr. Grant after the death of Mr. Bennett, in which Mr. Grant said he wanted revenge.
“‘I’m going to pop him,’” Mr. Green recalled Mr. Grant saying. “Or, ‘I’m going to be there when it happens.’”
Mr. Findling, in the defense’s closing statement, said there was “a tsunami of reasonable doubt.” Defense lawyers claimed Mr. Banks was targeted by the prosecution because of his celebrity and underscored that no one had actually been paid after the shooting.
In the trial, which lasted three weeks, lawyers for both sides sought to use rap lyrics, videos and interviews as evidence. Over objections from the defense, Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald allowed the admittance of some lyrics that prosecutors said gave insight into Mr. Banks’s state of mind after Mr. Bennett’s death.
They included audio and video of the song “Pissed Me Off,” on which he rapped: “Grab a gun / If you ain’t with it, put up money for a gun / Put up money for a hot car / put up money for a bond.” In the video, Mr. Banks wears a T-shirt that reads “Long Live Von.”
The judge also allowed a small portion from Mr. Banks’s 2024 podcast interview with DJ Akademiks, where the podcaster raised criticism from the rapper 6ix9ine, who said Mr. Banks had not done enough to avenge King Von’s death. Mr. Banks responded that online comments suggesting the same had stopped “for some reason.”
The judge did not allow into evidence the portion of the interview that immediately followed, where Mr. Banks said he did not take the criticism seriously, saying, “I try to turn all of the hate into love.”
Mr. Banks and his co-defendants are later expected to stand trial in Chicago for operating Only the Family as a criminal gang, in violation of the federal Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering Activity statute. Prosecutors claim that Mr. Banks helped orchestrate other violent, gang-related acts, including a 2021 shooting directed at Mr. Bowman and the 2022 murder of Stephon Mack, by ordering the attacks and offering bounties, which the defendants deny.
The murder-for-hire trial drew considerable attention, turning the downtown Los Angeles courthouse into a frenzied scene where content creators, celebrities and fans arrived daily.
Ye, the rapper known as Kanye West, attended a day of testimony and posed for a photo with a black T-shirt that read, “Free Durk.” The rapper Machine Gun Kelly watched court proceedings from an overflow room and was among the celebrities, including Young Thug and Meek Mill, who voiced support for Mr. Banks on social media.
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