Nearly 30 years after the 1996 drive-by shooting in Las Vegas that killed rap icon Tupac Shakur, former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis went on trial Monday in Clark County District Court. Davis, 63, faces a murder charge with a deadly weapon enhancement alleging he orchestrated the killing.
Almost three decades after Tupac Shakur was gunned down near the Las Vegas Strip, the long-standing mystery reached a courtroom. Family members of Shakur gathered in Las Vegas for the start of jury selection in a trial expected to last about a month. Duane Keffe D
Davis sat beside his attorney as Nevada Judge Carli Kierny questioned a pool of 75 potential jurors regarding potential conflicts and scheduling issues.
The case had remained cold for decades until public statements and a 2019 tell-all memoir written by Davis revived the investigation, culminating in his 2023 arrest. Davis has pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further, or assist a criminal gang. At the time of the shooting, Davis was a leader of the South Side Compton Crips in California.
The Night of the Shooting and the Prosecution’s Theory
Shakur was 25 years old and riding in a black BMW with music mogul Marion Suge
Knight on Sept. 7, 1996. They were headed to Club 662, where Shakur was scheduled to perform, when a white Cadillac pulled up beside them at a red light. Shakur was in the passenger seat when gunfire erupted. He was struck multiple times and died six days later, while Knight survived.
Prosecutors do not accuse Davis of pulling the trigger. Instead, Binu Palal, the county’s chief deputy district attorney, outlined a case aiming to prove that Davis made the calls that led to the rapper’s death and provided the weapon. The prosecution’s case draws heavily on Davis’s memoir, Compton Street Legends,
in which he described obtaining a handgun from an associate and placing it in the back seat of the Cadillac.
The trial is unlikely to definitively establish who fired the fatal shots. Orlando Baby Lane
Anderson, Davis’s nephew, was long suspected of being the shooter, but authorities never brought charges against him. Anderson died two years after Shakur in an unrelated gang shootout in Compton, California. Two other occupants of the Cadillac, Deandrae Freaky
Smith and Terry Bubble Up
Brown, have also died.
Witnesses, Testimony, and Courtroom Logistics
Family Reactions and the Legacy of an Icon
Outside the courthouse, Shakur’s cousin Kendrick Lesane addressed reporters and onlookers, calling the late rapper an angel from God
and a righteous man
while voicing support for a full accounting of those responsible.
“Whoever had anything to do with it, whoever set it up, whoever had any hand in it should be locked up in prison. They should do significant time because they took away a beautiful person, an icon, a legend, and a great human being.”
Kendrick Lesane, cousin of Tupac Shakur
At the time of his passing, Shakur’s fourth solo album had sold 5 million copies, cementing a cultural footprint that continues to resonate across the music world.
With public seating inside Clark County District Court strictly limited via a daily lottery system, court officials opened a second-floor viewing room with a live feed to accommodate public interest. Davis informed Judge Kierny that if convicted, he wants the judge to decide his sentence rather than the jury.
Worth a look
