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| Duane "Keffe D" Davis, shown in this booking photograph provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Davis is standing trial on murder charges in connection with the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. |
Duane “Keffe D” Davis is not accused of firing the gun.
The state’s case is that he did not have to.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis organized the Sept. 7, 1996, attack as retaliation after Shakur and members of his entourage beat Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, at the MGM Grand.
“Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting,” Palal told jurors.
Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He could face life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors say Davis spent roughly two hours after the casino fight arranging revenge, obtained a gun and joined three other men in a white Cadillac searching for Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight.
The Cadillac eventually pulled alongside the black BMW Knight was driving near the Las Vegas Strip. Shakur was struck multiple times and died six days later at 25. Knight survived with a minor wound.
Police have never established publicly which man in the Cadillac fired the shots.
That question is important historically, but it is not necessarily the question jurors have to answer.
Under Nevada law, prosecutors can seek a murder conviction against someone accused of knowingly taking part in the crime even if that person did not personally pull the trigger. Prosecutors contend Davis supplied the weapon and participated in planning and carrying out the attack.
Much of their case will depend on something investigators did not have in 1996: years of statements from Davis himself.
Davis has discussed the shooting in interviews, with investigators and in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend.” Prosecutors played portions of his recorded statements Monday and displayed the book for jurors.
In those accounts, Davis placed himself in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and described handing a gun to the men sitting behind him.
The other three men investigators have linked to the Cadillac — Anderson, Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown — have all died.
Davis is the only surviving alleged occupant.
That has made his public storytelling unusually important to a case that went nearly three decades without a prosecution. Police have said Davis was long considered a suspect but that his later statements helped revive an investigation that had gone cold.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft told jurors those statements are not the equivalent of proof.
Sanft challenged investigators for what he described as incomplete work and missing documentation and argued that Davis made claims in interviews and his book that law enforcement never independently verified.
“What they are telling you ... is really fiction,” Sanft told the jury.
Sanft’s name is confirmed by AP’s pretrial reporting, Las Vegas local coverage and court photography; a Reuters version of Monday’s story rendered the surname differently.
The first witnesses Monday took jurors back to the hours surrounding the shooting.
Retired Las Vegas police Officer Garry Dale testified that he and another officer stopped Knight’s BMW because it did not have a license plate. Shakur was riding with him.
The officers issued a warning and let them continue.
About 10 minutes later, Dale responded to the shooting and found emergency personnel removing Shakur from the BMW.
Former Las Vegas homicide detective Brent Becker described investigators’ difficulty getting witnesses to cooperate.
Ingrid Stokes, who was riding in another vehicle nearby, testified that she heard gunshots while stopped near Knight’s BMW. Her group sped away and nearly collided with a white four-door vehicle, she said.
Stokes testified that fear of retaliation and distrust of police made her reluctant to become involved.
Members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, were in the courtroom as prosecutors played Davis’ recorded statements.
The trial comes nearly 30 years after Shakur’s death and almost three years after a Clark County grand jury indicted Davis in 2023.
For decades, discussion of Shakur’s killing sprawled across books, documentaries, interviews and competing theories about who was responsible.
The criminal trial is considerably narrower.
Jurors do not have to resolve every question that has surrounded Tupac’s death since 1996.
They have to decide whether prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Davis participated in arranging the killing — or whether, as the defense argues, the state has built its case around stories that cannot be trusted.
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