Lil Durk Beat the Murder-for-Hire Case. The Judge Still Won't Say If He Goes Home.

The acquittal that didn't free him

Durk Banks has been in federal custody since his arrest in October 2024 — more than two years. In September, a jury acquitted him on all counts in the murder-for-hire trial built around the August 2022 shooting near the Beverly Center in Los Angeles that targeted Quando Rondo and killed his cousin, Saviay'a "Lul Pab" Robinson.

The acquittal changed his legal position. It did not change his address. Separate VICAR charges were split off for a second trial, and Banks — who has pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations — has stayed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles while his lawyers built the bond package Previously covered last month: support letters from Jay-Z and J. Cole, a Sony guarantee reported at up to $1 million, and Durk's own future earnings put up as collateral.

Wednesday was the day that package got its hearing.

Two hours, no answer

The hearing ran from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Los Angeles federal court. When it ended, Judge Fitzgerald took the request under submission — he will review the filings from both sides and rule in writing, and he gave no date for the decision. (One report, XXL's, said a ruling was expected Thursday; the courtroom reporters for Billboard and HotNewHipHop both reported no timeline beyond the coming days. This story goes with the majority read: no date was given.)

Billboard, which attended the hearing, described a judge who sounded torn. Fitzgerald said not much has changed for Durk, and that even an innocent person would be tempted to flee at this point — and, in the same hearing, that the acquittal changes the calculation a great deal, because Durk now has a strong incentive to let the legal system play out. He called the decision a "question of psychology."

What the defense put on the table

Lead defense attorney Drew Findling described Banks as a hero in his hometown of Chicago and told the judge he would comply with any conditions the court set. "He has a very strong incentive not to behave foolishly," Findling said.

The letters did some of the talking. Findling noted the file started with Jay-Z — "We started with Jay-Z after the government said, 'He's no Jay-Z,'" he told the judge. In an October 12 letter, Jay-Z wrote of Banks: "I met Durk several years ago. He was kind, respectful and focused on his career. He approached his work with seriousness and discipline." J. Cole wrote in support as well. And Andrea Robinson — Lul Pab's mother — told the court her family did not oppose bond if the judge considered it appropriate.

Defense attorney Christy O'Connor described a "huge and all encompassing bond package," including Banks's mother's home and his future music royalties as collateral. The expanded proposal reported by XXL also pledges his publishing rights, his name, image and likeness, and his touring revenue — in the defense's framing, everything he could ever earn, gone if he runs.

"It is just too risky to release him"

Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Weiner argued the other side of the psychology question. Banks, he said, was arrested while attempting to board a private jet in Florida in 2024. "He can create music from another country. He can accumulate wealth," Weiner said, warning he could flee somewhere with no extradition agreement with the United States.

Then the prosecutor took the fight inside the jail. "Mr. Banks has absolutely no respect for authority," Weiner said. "Mr. Banks treats MDC like a hotel." He alleged Banks hid a contraband phone in a body cavity before it was secreted out, that he "attempted to engage with a cooperating witness," and that he acts like "he runs" the jail. Prosecutors' written opposition, filed the same day, says Banks has already been denied bond four times, and XXL reports he is under investigation for allegedly facilitating the introduction of contraband at MDC — prosecutors claimed in court that he obtained an Apple Watch, concealed it, and used it to make hundreds of phone calls, per a reporter following the hearing. Those are allegations, not findings; no court has ruled on them.

Weiner also confirmed the reports that surfaced days before the hearing: Banks is currently in solitary confinement at MDC, following a dispute with guards over searches of his cell. Defense attorney Brian Steel told the judge Banks is being "targeted" by guards. "MDC is horrible," Steel said.

"It is just too risky to release him," Weiner concluded.

Fitzgerald rules in writing — no date set

Nothing changes tonight. Banks remains in custody — in solitary — while the judge reads. His second trial is scheduled for August 2027, and prosecutors said at the hearing they would be happy to move it faster. His lawyers, meanwhile, are preparing to argue in court papers over the coming months that the remaining VICAR count is weak and that evidence tied to the Rondo shooting should be excluded on double-jeopardy grounds after the acquittal.

The next move belongs to Judge Fitzgerald, in writing, on a date he has not announced.

We covered the letters. This is what the letters bought: a judge who listened for two hours and still couldn't say yes or no. That indecision is the story — the government acquitted-by-a-jury problem in one hearing. A jury already told Durk Banks he didn't do the thing that put him in that building, and the system is now deciding whether a man it couldn't convict is too dangerous to sleep in his own bed while it tries again on a different charge. Whichever way Fitzgerald rules, the ruling will say something real about what an acquittal is worth. We'll be here when it lands.