The stepbrother of the rapper Tupac Shakur filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Duane Keith Davis, who was charged with Mr. Shakur’s murder in 2023 after a decades-long investigation failed to make meaningful progress.
The stepbrother, Maurice Shakur, whose stage name is Mopreme, filed the complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, seeking unspecified damages against Mr. Davis, who is known as Keffe D, and “John Does 1 to 100,” whom the complaint describes as “individuals who may have participated in planning, financing, directing or carrying out the conspiracy.”
According to the compliant, lawyers for Maurice Shakur plan to amend the filing with the names and actions of the Doe defendants once those details are made available through discovery. The lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
A lawyer for Mr. Davis also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Alex Abdo, the litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said that lawsuits often named “John Does” when a plaintiff knows or suspects that unidentified people are responsible for the conduct they’re complaining about.
“The idea is that the unknown individuals will be identified in the course of the case,” Mr. Abdo said.
Tupac Shakur, one of the most prominent musical artists of the 1990s, was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996, after attending a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon. The rapper died days later at the age of 25.
In the decades that followed, the investigation went cold and new evidence became scarce.
“Many individuals who were involved have long since passed way, while others have been hard to identify,” Maurice Shakur’s lawsuit reads. “Yet, one thing is certain: There remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes.”
Maurice Shakur’s complaint seeks to recover damages on behalf of the rapper’s stepfather’s estate.
A break in the case came in 2023 when Mr. Davis was arrested and charged with one count of murder with the use of a deadly weapon, and a gang enhancement. Mr. Davis pleaded not guilty.
For years, Mr. Davis claimed that he had been in the white Cadillac that had pulled up to Tupac Shakur’s vehicle when a passenger in the Cadillac opened fire. The authorities confirmed that Mr. Davis’s own words, in interviews and in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” had reinvigorated their dormant investigation.
After Mr. Davis’s arrest, prosecutors said he had “ordered the death” of Mr. Shakur after the escalation of a gang dispute among Mr. Davis’s nephew, Mr. Shakur and his associates. Officials said in earlier court papers that Mr. Davis had acquired a gun “for the purposes of hunting down” the rapper and the co-founder of his record label, Marion Knight, who goes by Suge.
Mr. Davis, who is expected to stand trial in August, has since changed his mind about his involvement in the shooting. He told ABC News last year that he was not in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting and that he had not written or even read his memoir, which describes the shooting and his role in it.
“They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing,” he told the news outlet.
Afeni Shakur, the rapper’s mother, filed her own wrongful death lawsuit in 1997 against, among others, Mr. Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson.
Mr. Anderson was killed in a gang-related shooting in 1998. Ms. Shakur’s case was dismissed without prejudice the next year.
The new complaint from Maurice Shakur argues that it is “fundamentally different” from Ms. Shakur’s, through the support of new information, including from related grand jury transcripts.
According to the complaint, that information has revealed a more complicated conspiracy behind the rapper’s murder.
“For the first time in nearly 30 years, threads are starting to come together,” it said.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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