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Lil Durk lost a key pretrial battle Friday, leaving federal prosecutors free to show jurors images pulled from his seized cellphone.
U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald denied Durk’s suppression motion and admitted Exhibit 200, a compilation of images from a forensic phone extraction.
“The Motion is DENIED and Exhibit 200 is ADMITTED. Even assuming defects in the GBI’s seizure or retention of the phone and its data, the FBI’s later warranted searches were sufficiently attenuated from that conduct, and Banks’s separate arguments based on federal delay and late disclosure do not warrant suppression or exclusion,” Fitzgerald wrote.
GBI agents seized the phone during a July 2021 home-invasion investigation under a warrant covering electronics or belongings left by Durk’s attackers.
The agency secured another warrant on August 19, 2021, searched the device and preserved a forensic copy of its contents.
Durk’s lawyers initially argued both warrants failed, the five-year retention violated his rights and prosecutors disclosed the material too late for proper trial preparation.
Fitzgerald instead treated the GBI and FBI searches as independent work separated by nearly five years, writing:
“The same reasoning applies here. As in Medina and Sessions, federal investigators here were not involved in the GBI’s 2021 investigation including the initial seizure of Banks’s phone or the subsequent retention and extractions.”
Fitzgerald rejected that timing theory, explaining:
“In other words, Dass concerned the inspectors’ delay following their own seizure of the property at issue. Here, by contrast, the FBI neither seized nor possessed Banks’s phone or the extraction during the period between the commencement of this federal case and June 2026. These facts are analogous to Medina and Sessions, not Dass.”
Federal prosecutors accuse Durk of financing a 2022 Los Angeles attack targeting Quando Rondo that instead killed Saviay’a “Lul Pab” Robinson.
Durk pleaded not guilty to five charges involving stalking, murder-for-hire and gunfire before his August 20 trial with Deandre Wilson and David Lindsey.
Separate racketeering counts accuse Durk of leading an OTF enterprise that rewarded violence and funded drug trafficking, including claims tied to shootings in Chicago and Atlanta.
Durk’s second racketeering trial remains unscheduled after prosecutors said Monday they requested defense dates on July 28 and August 5 without receiving an answer.
