The most telling moment of OTF Jam’s testimony in the Lil Durk murder-for-hire trial might not have been the accusations themselves, but what he said right before the court broke for lunch on August 27th.
Looking toward the case he’s helping build against his former associate, Jam told the courtroom, “This may be hard to believe because of what I’m doing… I still have love for him, I just don’t have no respect for him.” That’s a line that cuts both ways, and it’s the kind of thing that tends to stick with a jury long after the lawyers are done talking.
Jam had already admitted to committing several crimes before taking the stand as a government witness, and his testimony placed Lil Durk at the center of an alleged conspiracy involving a hit on Quando Rondo and Lul Timm.
He claimed, though, that he never actually got paid for any of the alleged hits, which is a detail that raises its own questions about motivation and credibility. Defense attorney Brian Steel clearly had no intention of letting those inconsistencies slide.
Steel came in with receipts. He played a recording of Jam telling the FBI that Durk never actually said he was going to put up money for the alleged hit, directly contradicting what Jam had told the jury on the stand.
When Jam tried to wiggle out of it by saying “it’s more to it than that,” Steel shut it down fast, telling him “there’s always more to it than that with you.” It was the kind of exchange that reminded the room exactly why Steel has become one of the most sought-after criminal defense attorneys working today.
According to reporter Michael Blackshire, who has been following the proceedings closely, Steel managed to get Jam to openly admit that his statements under cross-examination were contrary to what he had already told the jury.
That’s a significant moment in any trial, and it hands the defense a concrete piece of ammunition to work with when closing arguments eventually come around. Getting a witness to contradict themselves on the record is not something that gets easily walked back.
What makes Jam’s position so complicated is that he is not a neutral party here. He is someone who has admitted to criminal conduct himself, and he is now cooperating with the government, which means the jury has to weigh everything he says against the obvious incentive he has to tell prosecutors what they want to hear.
Steel’s cross-examination leaned hard into that tension, and by the time the session wrapped, the picture of Jam as a clean, reliable witness had taken some visible damage.
The trial is still ongoing, with Steel set to complete the remainder of his cross-examination of Jam in the coming days.
There is clearly more ground left to cover, and given how the first round went, it seems unlikely that Jam’s testimony is going to get any easier to defend under continued questioning.
Whatever comes next, the courtroom dynamic between Steel and Jam has already become one of the defining threads of this entire case.
