Closing arguments are set to be heard in a Las Vegas court in the trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former South Side Compton Crips gang leader accused of ordering the murder of hip-hop star Tupac Shakur in 1996.
Davis, 63, is accused of leading a group of men to kill Shakur in retaliation for the beating of his nephew, though he is not accused of pulling the trigger himself. He has pleaded not guilty.
Evidence and witnesses
Police said they long suspected Davis but lacked enough evidence to charge him until he went public with his story in media appearances and a memoir published in 2019. The book, along with tapes of secret meetings with investigators, forms most of the prosecution’s case.
Over the weeks-long trial, Clark county district attorney Marc DiGiacomo and chief deputy district attorney Binu Palal brought 25 witnesses to the stand, including some who had to be ordered by the court because they were reluctant to testify.
Davis’s attorney, Michael Sanft, sought to frame the stories and statements as the exaggerated and embellished claims of a man hoping to benefit from public interest and unanswered questions around Shakur’s murder.
Prosecution's case
In the final moments of the trial, prosecutors are likely to argue that Davis’s story is generally consistent and that he has essentially admitted to arranging Shakur’s killing, which under Nevada law is enough to be charged with murder.
Prosecutors played eight hours of recordings from four separate events in different years, during which Davis shared in his own words what happened on the night of 7 September 1996. Davis wrote that he had hatched the plan to retaliate against Shakur after the rapper’s entourage beat his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, in the lobby of the MGM Grand earlier that night. Anderson, who died two years later in an unrelated shootout, was a member of a rival gang in Compton, California.
Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight, the founder of his label, had attended a Mike Tyson boxing match at the casino when the altercation with Anderson took place, and were on their way to an after-party. A white Cadillac pulled up next to them while they were stopped at a red light, and someone in that car began shooting, according to investigators.
In his book, Davis claimed to have been in that car and that he had brought a .40-caliber Glock with him. “Them jumping on my nephew gave us the green light to want to do something to their ass,” he wrote. “Pac chose the wrong game to play.”
Prosecutors have not named the shooter, and the three other men in the car have since died.
Family's long wait
While the trial has finally come to an end, family members had been left to wonder for years why it took so long for investigators to reach a conclusion in the case.
“We’ve been waiting 30 years to grieve properly,” Zayd Akinyela, Shakur’s cousin, told reporters outside the courtroom when the trial was under way. “A lot of people don’t get to grieve until they understand what happened to their loved one and how it happened.”
