Rapper Lil Durk (Durk Banks) mounted a fast-paced defence on Thursday, calling nine witnesses in a single day, including the wife of a key prosecution cooperator, as both sides rested in his high-profile murder-for-hire trial. Banks is accused of ordering a bounty on rival rapper Quando Rondo in revenge for the 2020 killing of his close friend and protégé King Von; jurors have been told to return on Tuesday for closing arguments. The case centres on an August 2022 shooting near Los Angeles' Beverly Center in which Quando Rondo survived but his cousin was killed, and it hinges heavily on cooperating witnesses who pleaded guilty and testified against Banks.

Among Thursday's witnesses was Lashanta Hester, wife of cooperator Kasey Hester, who contradicted her husband's account of receiving a call directing him to fly to California for the attack, insisting she never heard such a conversation despite prosecutors questioning her credibility over family gang ties. The defence also called Shekema Springfield, a US Army officer and mother of King Von's son, to rebut testimony from another cooperator, Kavon Grant, who had claimed Banks personally orchestrated the shooting after learning Quando Rondo would be in Los Angeles and arranged a stolen vehicle and flights to San Diego to avoid detection.