By: Eugene Upah
Three decades after the murder of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur shocked the music world, jury selection is due to begin Monday in Las Vegas in the trial of the man accused of orchestrating the killing.
Duane Keith Davis, 63, known as “Keffe D,” is charged in Clark County District Court with one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon with intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty and faces life in prison without parole if convicted.
The case, State of Nevada v. Duane Keith Davis, will be presided over by Judge Carli Kierny and is expected to last up to six weeks.
Shakur, 25, was the best-selling rapper of his era when he was shot four times on September 7, 1996, in a drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas Strip.
He had been in town to watch the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fight at the MGM Grand with Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight. Hours after Tyson’s 109-second victory, Shakur was riding as a passenger in Knight’s BMW when a white Cadillac pulled alongside and opened fire at an intersection. Shakur’s right lung was destroyed. He died six days later after being placed on life support.
His death, followed less than a year later by the murder of rival Christopher Wallace, known as The Notorious B.I.G., became a defining moment for gangsta rap’s golden age and intensified the East Coast-West Coast feud.
For 27 years, no one was charged. Las Vegas police said Davis was a longtime suspect but lacked admissible evidence until he began implicating himself in public statements, interviews and his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend.
Prosecutors do not allege that Davis pulled the trigger. Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo has described him as the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered the death”. The state’s theory is that the killing was retaliation. Earlier that night, Shakur, Knight and members of their entourage had assaulted Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson, in the MGM Grand lobby after the Tyson fight. Prosecutors say Davis then provided the gun and instructed occupants of the Cadillac to shoot.
Davis was arrested in September 2023 while on a walk near his home in Henderson, Nevada, after a grand jury indictment. A search of the home recovered 40-caliber bullets, computers and a copy of his memoir.
A major pre-trial victory for the prosecution came on July 29, when Judge Kierny ruled that a 2008 police interview Davis gave to LAPD detectives can be played at trial.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft had argued the interview was supposed to be confidential under a proffer agreement and that detectives promised it would not be used against him. Davis himself wrote, “I sang because they promised I would not be prosecuted.”
Kierny rejected that argument, finding the interview became admissible once Davis chose to write about the crime and speak publicly, calling his book the “real truth.” The judge also ruled the memoir itself is admissible, despite defense claims it was fictionalized for profit.
The witness list filed Aug. 4 contains more than 200 names, according to USA TODAY. Among the most notable is Suge Knight, who was wounded in the same shooting and was with Shakur when he died. Knight, now 60 and serving a 28-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter in an unrelated 2015 hit-and-run case, has previously said he would not testify, telling TMZ in 2023, “1000% I wouldn’t go”.
The list also reportedly includes Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former bodyguard and retired detectives including former LAPD detective Greg Kading, whose book Murder Rap first made the 2008 interview public.
Prosecutors plan to argue that Davis’s own words closed a case that had become folklore. The defense is expected to attack the credibility of those statements and argue there is no forensic evidence, no eyewitness who identifies Davis as the shooter and no murder weapon tying him directly to the crime.
Jury selection starting today marks the first time anyone has faced trial for Shakur’s murder, 10,939 days after his death.
