Tupac Murder Trial Opens 30 Years Later

Duane "Keffe D" Davis, 63, went on trial Monday in Las Vegas on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. He has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors told a Clark County jury that Davis did not fire the shots but ordered them — revenge, they say, for the beating of his nephew hours earlier.

The defense called that account "fiction" and told jurors the state has no hard evidence after three decades.

What Prosecutors Say They Have

Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal put the state's theory to the jury plainly: "Let's be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew."

Palal added: "Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself."

That is the core of the case. Prosecutors say Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, was the "on-ground, on-site commander" who "ordered the death" of Shakur, and they are leaning on Davis' own words — a memoir he co-authored in 2019 and a string of public statements he gave between 1998 and 2003.

In the book, Davis wrote that he handed the gun used in the killing to his nephew, Orlando Anderson, who fired into Shakur's car. A judge ruled the memoir can be used as evidence.

Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo put the point bluntly: "Had he decided to never write the book, he would not, probably, have ever been prosecuted for the crime."

Prosecutors allege Davis acquired a gun and organized two vehicles to head to a Las Vegas club, one of them a white Cadillac carrying three other men including Anderson. On the way, the group spotted Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion "Suge" Knight in a caravan of cars, made a U-turn, and pulled up alongside. Davis, in the passenger seat, passed the gun back to Anderson, the state says.

The Defense

Davis, in a navy suit and blue tie, sat with his lawyers as they attacked the investigation itself.

"What facts do they have after 30 years?" his attorney Michael Sanft asked, questioning why no one was arrested for nearly three decades and why "no-one corroborates any of this."

Davis has distanced himself from the memoir, saying he did not write all of it and that parts were fictionalized to sell copies. His team pointed to missing police reports, disputed evidence and what it called "biased, sloppy and incomplete" detective work, and argued the state is relying on "unreliable people with criminal records, financial motivations and inconsistent statements" whose stories shifted over time.

The First Witnesses

The state's first witness was Garry Dale, who worked for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in 1996. He testified that he rode in the ambulance with Shakur, who refused to say who shot him. "We'll take care of it," Shakur told him, according to the testimony.

Prosecutors used that to explain why the case went nowhere for decades: in a world of guns and gangs, they told jurors, "silence means survival."

Ingrid Stokes, who was there that night, testified that she and friends had run into Knight and Shakur and were following them to a club when a car began trying to get in front of them. They pulled over at a light to switch drivers.

"We were head down, taking our seat belts off, when we heard the gunshots," Stokes testified. "All hell broke loose."