Jury deliberations began on Monday in the murder trial of Tupac Shakur, the rapper who was killed in a 1996 drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas Strip that has remained unresolved for nearly 30 years.
Shortly before the 12 jurors left the courtroom to deliberate, the prosecution and the defense sparred in closing arguments over the culpability of Duane Keith Davis, a former gang member who is accused of obtaining a gun and pursuing Mr. Shakur in an act of revenge amid a gang feud.
Binu Palal, one of the prosecutors, highlighted Mr. Davis’s own statements over the years, in which he said he played a central role in the killing, including in conversations with the police, an interview with documentary filmmakers and a 2019 memoir.
“Many years ago, O.J. Simpson wrote a book that said ‘If I did it,’” Mr. Palal told the jury. “Duane Davis wrote the book ‘I did it.’”
Michael Sanft, a lawyer for Mr. Davis, pointed to inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Mr. Davis’s statements to argue that they were invented to turn a profit. He compared the account to the movie “Titanic,” saying it may have been based on a historical event, but the core plotline was made up.
“You’re reading a book that is fiction and not fact, but the state wants you to believe that this is somehow a confession,” Mr. Sanft said.
Mr. Davis, 63, who is known by the nickname Keffe D, has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with a deadly weapon. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
The three-week trial has deconstructed the events of Sept. 7, 1996, when prosecutors say the feud between two gangs from Compton, Calif., boiled over on the streets of Las Vegas. The catalyst, they say, was when Mr. Shakur — and his record-label boss Marion Knight, known as Suge — took part in a beating of Mr. Davis’s nephew at the MGM Grand hotel and casino, shortly after a Mike Tyson prizefight.
Such a public attack, Mr. Palal said, “required immediate violent retaliation.”
A few hours later, Mr. Knight and Mr. Shakur were on their way to a club in a black BMW when a white Cadillac pulled up beside them and someone inside opened fire. Mr. Knight was grazed with a bullet. Mr. Shakur, 25, was hit four times and died at a hospital days later.
In his closing argument, Mr. Sanft said the prosecution’s case was filled with presumptions and was lacking hard evidence. Neither the gun nor the white Cadillac were recovered after the shooting.
“There’s not one thing that says that Mr. Davis was in Las Vegas on the night of the shooting of Tupac Shakur,” Mr. Sanft said, noting that there were no phone records, surveillance footage or photographs placing his client in the city.
In a conversation with federal agents in 1998, Mr. Davis acknowledged that he had been in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting but denied knowing who killed Mr. Shakur.
Mr. Palal said it was not just Mr. Davis’s own statements that proved his guilt, but a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence. He pointed to hotel receipts that placed two close associates of Mr. Davis’s in Las Vegas; testimony about the simmering gang tensions; and several witnesses in the proximity of the shooting who supported details from his account.
For years, the police investigation into the killing was stymied by missing evidence and uncooperative witnesses. Prosecutors say Mr. Davis is the only person alive who was in the white Cadillac.
A turning point in the case came in 2008, when Mr. Davis was under the threat of possible drug charges. He told the police that the night of the shooting, he and other members of his gang, the South Side Compton Crips, sought out Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight after the beating of his nephew at the MGM Grand. But he shared the information under a proffer agreement that protected him from being prosecuted based on what he told the police in that interview.
In recent years, Mr. Davis gave prosecutors an opening when he began talking about the shooting in public settings.
During deliberations, the jury will have to consider first-degree murder, which requires that the killing was premeditated, and second-degree murder, which is intentional but unplanned.
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