Nearly three decades after Tupac Shakur was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip, the man prosecutors say orchestrated his killing is finally standing trial. Duane "Keffe D" Davis, 63, faces a charge of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote a criminal gang, and could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.
Opening statements began Monday in a Clark County courtroom packed with Shakur's relatives, reporters and jurors preparing for weeks of testimony. Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that while few people connected to the case have ever been willing to talk, Davis has spent decades struggling to stay quiet about his role in it.
An Act Of Revenge, Prosecutors Say
Prosecutors allege the September 7, 1996 drive-by shooting was retaliation for a beating earlier that same night, when Shakur and his entourage attacked Davis's nephew, Orlando Anderson, in the MGM Grand following a Mike Tyson fight. According to the state, Davis did not fire the fatal shots himself but planned and directed the attack that followed hours later, when gunfire from a white Cadillac struck Shakur's vehicle at a nearby intersection.
The defense has pushed back hard, with attorney Michael Sanft telling jurors in his opening statement that the prosecution's case amounts to fiction rather than fact, and arguing that investigators' work over the decades has been inconsistent and incomplete. Sanft has also suggested that no one may ever conclusively solve a case this old, calling the evidence stale after thirty years.
Davis's Own Words Take Center Stage
Much of the state's case rests on Davis's own public statements. He discussed his presence in the car that night with federal investigators in 1998 and 1999, spoke further with Las Vegas police in a 2009 proffer interview, and later detailed his account in a 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, in which he described himself as one of the last living eyewitnesses to the shooting. Those recorded admissions, which the defense fought unsuccessfully to keep out of the trial, are expected to feature heavily as testimony continues.
Early witnesses have included retired law enforcement officers who worked the case and a forensic pathologist who walked jurors through Shakur's cause of death, testimony some family members chose to step out of the courtroom for. No one was charged in the killing for 27 years until Davis's 2023 indictment, a gap that turned one of hip-hop's most famous unsolved mysteries into a trial the genre's fans have waited a generation to see.