Jurors began deliberating Monday in the murder trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who is accused of orchestrating the fatal shooting of Tupac Shakur off the Las Vegas Strip nearly 30 years ago.
Prosecutors allege Davis, 63, arranged the rapper’s killing by getting a .40-caliber handgun and passing it to fellow members of the Southside Crips-Burris Street gang as they rode in a Cadillac on Sept. 7, 1996.
The motive, prosecutors told jurors, was revenge after Shakur, then-Death Row Records mogul Marion “Suge” Knight and members of the Mob Piru gang had beaten Davis’ nephew Orlando Anderson at the MGM Grand hours earlier.
“Duane Davis, in the culture of gangs, could not let that stand. He acquired a firearm, got his group together, and went hunting for Mr. Shakur or Mr. Knight,” Clark County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Binu Palal told jurors.
In closing their case, prosecutors told jurors they had not only heard Davis’ own incriminating words in interviews, but also had been presented with a deluge of circumstantial evidence linking him to one of the most famous murders in modern history.
But Anthony Sanft, Davis’ defense lawyer, argued that the prosecution had no forensics, no eyewitness, and not a single shred of physical evidence placing Davis in the Cadillac with the shooter.
“The state wants you to believe this was a confession, that he was somehow there in person at the time of the shooting,” Sanft told jurors. “We can’t even put Davis in Las Vegas.”
Sanft claimed his client fabricated his story in a 2008 interview with Los Angeles police and federal authorities as part of their investigation into the 1997 slaying of Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, to avoid a life sentence for drug dealing. He later repeated parts of the fabricated stories to help sell his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” Sanft argued.
“You’re reading a book that is fiction and not fact,” Sanft told jurors.
Sanft showed the jury that, during a documentary interview in the area of the crime scene, Davis got the exact location of the shooting wrong.
Palal, however, argued that Davis had to retaliate for his nephew’s beating. The shooting occurred, he said, when the Cadillac that Davis was riding in passed Shakur and Knight’s BMW.
“They happen to run into Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight going the opposite way … and in that moment, a decision is made not to keep going, but to make a U-turn around, pass a gun and shoot into Tupac and Suge Knight’s car,” Palal said.
Shakur and Knight were both struck in the shooting. Knight survived, but Shakur died from his wounds in a Las Vegas hospital days later.
Palal told jurors that, in Nevada, being part of a conspiracy makes someone guilty of murder; “you don’t have to pull the trigger.” Making a U-turn, he added, is evidence of premeditation.
The prosecutor played a recording of a 2008 LAPD federal task force interview in which Davis said Terrence Brown was the driver of the Cadillac that night, with Anderson and Deandrae “Big Dre” Smith in the back and himself in the passenger seat. They only noticed their targets in the BMW, he said, because some women in a Chrysler Sebring were yelling at the rapper.
“Tupac gave himself away; otherwise, they would have got away,” Davis could be heard saying.
“If it had been on my side, I was going to blast,” Davis says on the recording. He says he then handed the gun to Smith, who didn’t want to shoot, so Anderson took the gun and fired.
“I saw a bullet go into Suge’s head. I thought he was dead,” Davis says on the recording. He goes on to describe Shakur diving toward the BMW’s back seat.
Palal said the presence of women in a Sebring was never publicized.
“This case is drenched with circumstantial evidence,” he said.
Palal also pointed to testimony from retired Compton Police Det. Robert Ladd as to the gang ties of Davis and his compatriots. Ladd testified that Davis was the shot caller of the Compton Southside Crips.
Ladd and an FBI agent both also confirmed that Davis knew the Harlem drug dealer who allegedly provided the gun used in the shooting.
Palal said a wounded Shakur, while in an ambulance, told a police officer, “We’ll take care of it.” He reminded jurors that Ladd had testified the Mob Pirus targeted only the Southside Crips in the wake of Shakur’s shooting — out of the 50-plus gangs in Compton at the time.
Sanft, however, said there was no proof of a supposed instigating incident for the gang feud: Anderson allegedly snatching a Death Row chain from a Mob Piru at the Lakewood Mall. Prosecutors also cannot show who was in the Cadillac, he said, and a female witness who saw the incident testified she never heard anyone yelling Tupac’s name as Davis described to police and in his book.
Sanft cast Compton and Los Angeles police as dirty, specifically former LAPD Det. Greg Kading, who conducted the 2008 interview with Davis and later wrote a book on the killings of Tupac and Biggie.
Sanft questioned why jurors never heard from Kading or Knight, who was sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter in 2018.
He also noted investigators never checked out a white Cadillac witnesses described as being in the Death Row entourage vehicle procession that night.
He questioned why former Compton cop Reggie Wright Jr., the record label’s security head, left Shakur — who’d been repeatedly shot at — largely unguarded that night.
“Only one unarmed bodyguard for the most popular rap artist in the world,” Sanft said.
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