Lil Durk tried to keep images from his seized cellphone away from a federal jury. A judge has now said prosecutors can bring them into the courtroom.
U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald denied the rapper’s suppression request, allowing prosecutors to use Exhibit 200, a compilation of images recovered from a forensic copy of Durk’s phone.
“The Motion is DENIED and Exhibit 200 is ADMITTED,” Fitzgerald wrote in his ruling.
The phone dates back to a separate July 2021 home-invasion investigation conducted by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Agents seized the device under a warrant, then obtained another warrant on Aug. 19, 2021, before searching it and preserving a copy of its data.
Durk’s defense challenged how the phone was seized and kept, while also arguing that federal prosecutors waited too long to disclose the material.
Fitzgerald was not persuaded. He wrote that federal investigators “were not involved in the GBI’s 2021 investigation,” distinguishing the FBI’s later searches from the earlier state investigation.
The decision clears another hurdle for prosecutors as Durk prepares to fight allegations stemming from a 2022 Los Angeles shooting.
Authorities accuse him of financing an attack intended for Quando Rondo that instead killed Saviay’a “Lul Pab” Robinson.
Durk has pleaded not guilty to five federal charges involving stalking, murder-for-hire, and gunfire.
