Dontay “Big Durk” Banks Sr. went on Instagram on August 19, 2026, and asked people to pray. Jury selection in his son’s federal trial was the next morning in Los Angeles. Keep us in prayer, he said. Shower love. Do not let a day pass without dua. Three to four weeks. We will be victorious in the end, inshallah. He has been the public father on this file: videos, Islamic prayer, thank-yous to fans, footage of him praying with Durk Banks. That is a parent doing the only job still available when the government has the calendar. It is not a finding. Lil Durk has pleaded not guilty to federal conspiracy and murder-for-hire counts. The trial is the finding.

The indictment the public has been reading since 2024 alleges that Banks and OTF associates targeted Tyquian “Quando Rondo” Bowman after a cycle of killings that already included King Von in 2020 and Durk’s brother Dontay “DThang” Banks in 2021. Prosecutors say the August 2022 ambush at a Los Angeles gas station was that plot in the street. Quando survived. His cousin Saviay’a “Lul Pab” Robinson did not. She is the person the death counts attach to. Durk was arrested in Florida in October 2024 with others. The caption is United States v. Banks and co-defendants in the Central District of California. Lyrics such as “Pissed Me Off” are in the government’s theory as intent. The defense’s theory is that songs are songs and grief is not a contract. Challenging rap as evidence is how these trials sound now. A judge will decide what the jury hears.

What a father’s prayer is

It is love and it is messaging. Big Durk cannot cross-examine a special agent. He can ask a timeline of fans to say amen every day for a month. Victorious is the word a family uses when the alternative is a son in a federal facility for the rest of a life. The government will use a different vocabulary: witnesses — dozens were previewed — phones, money, travel. Key figures in the orbit have died since the shooting. Defense lawyers will call that a hole. Prosecutors will call it a case they can still try.

Robinson’s family does not get an Instagram series about dua. They get a courtroom in a city where their relative was killed. Quando Rondo is a living target in the paperwork and a man who walked away from that gas station. Keep those people in the paragraph when the camera is on a father and a son holding hands.

How to watch the next three weeks

Not guilty means the government has to prove the agreement and the death and the interstate piece beyond a reasonable doubt. A prayer circle is not reasonable doubt. A catalog is not a confession unless the judge lets it close enough. Big Durk asked for a month of uninterrupted faith. The Southern California jury pool filled out questionnaires instead.

Durk Banks is one of the most streamed rappers of his generation. That fact bought him a defense team and a father with a platform. It did not buy him out of indictment. Lul Pab is not streaming. The trial that started August 20 is about whether a hit was ordered and paid. Everything else — the prayers, the lyrics fight, the family videos — is the noise around a federal homicide theory. Believe the plea. Believe the father’s fear. Believe that a young woman is still dead in 2022. The verdict will have to live with all three. Until it arrives, the accurate sentence is the one Big Durk already said and the one the clerk already filed. Pray, he asked. Not guilty, the son said. The rest is Los Angeles.