Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder was an “act of revenge,” prosecutor tells jury in trial of accused mastermind

Opening statements began Monday in the trial of a man accused of orchestrating the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, the start of weeks of testimony revisiting what happened on a Las Vegas night nearly 30 years ago.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, is charged with murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang in Shakur’s death. He pleaded not guilty, but if convicted, he faces life in prison.

Davis entered the courtroom in a blue suit and tie and scanned the audience to see who was there before sitting next to his lawyer, Michael Sanft, once the jury was sworn in and seated.

Members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, sat quietly in the front row of the courtroom behind prosecutors.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal showed jurors a picture of the Mike Tyson fight with the date “September 7, 1996” and showed video of Shakur’s entourage attacking Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.

“On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur publicly, on camera, participated in a humiliating beating of Duane Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson,” he said. “Then, two and a half hours later … Tupac is gunned down in a drive-by shooting from a white Cadillac in an act of revenge.”

Palal said Davis did not pull the trigger, but had handed the gun to someone sitting in the back seat of his car and ordered that person to shoot the rapper.

“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 said. “Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

His lawyer in the defense opening called the prosecution’s narrative “fiction.” 

Sanft questioned why the Clark County DA’s office did not charge Davis years ago, CBS affiliate KLAS-TV reported from inside the courtroom.

“No one corroborates any of this,” Sanft told the jury, adding: “What facts do they have after 30 years?”

The long-unsolved drive-by shooting gripped the hip-hop community, partly because no one was charged until Davis was indicted in 2023.

Shakur remains a cultural icon and is considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time, despite dying at 25. He was nominated for six Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.

In recent years, he received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, had a street in Oakland named in his honor and inspired a character in the upcoming video game “Stranger Than Heaven.”

A few fans lined up early Monday for a coveted seat in the courthouse to watch the first day of testimony. Din Malone took a bus from Denver and hopes to stay for the entire trial.

“As a brother and a fan, I felt like he talked through his music,” said Malone, who wore a Tupac shirt and played Shakur’s music from his phone while waiting to get inside.

Over the course of the trial, which could span weeks, prosecutors plan to call 35 to 45 potential witnesses, and the defense will call only a handful to testify.

Maurice Shakur recently told The Associated Press that sitting through the trial will be retraumatizing for the family, but it’s important to be there.

“We’re gonna stand by Pac as we always have,” he said.

All eyes on Tupac

Along with Shakur’s family, friends and fans traveled to Las Vegas to show their support during jury selection.

Darryl Harper, a veteran music producer who collaborated with Shakur at Death Row Records on songs released after the 1996 shooting, said he booked a plane ticket as soon as the latest trial date was set.

“He became a personal friend of mine as I worked with him almost every day of his last days here,” said Harper, who flew in from his home in Georgia.

Shakur’s cousins Kendrick Lesane and William Lesane flew in from Atlanta last week. William Lesane said he wants someone held accountable.

“For me, justice has long left the station 30 years ago,” he said.

Prosecutors allege Davis was the shot-caller

The gunfire that killed Shakur came from a white Cadillac that Davis was riding in with three others, all of whom have since died.

“When he says he’s the only person who can tell what happened, he’s right,” Palal said.

In 2008, Davis spoke to investigators looking into the deaths of Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace. He described handing a gun to the men in the back seat of a white Cadillac that fired on a black BMW with Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight inside.

During the investigation, Davis was under an agreement that what he said about Shakur’s killing couldn’t be used against him. But nearly 10 years later, Davis published a book with those details and participated in media interviews in which he laid out his role in the shooting.

The book and his public statements revived the Las Vegas investigation and became key pieces of evidence, prosecutors say.

“Had he decided to never write the book, he would not, probably, have ever been prosecuted for the crime,” prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo recently said.

As prosecutors played audio of Davis explaining the moment Shakur was shot, members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice Shakur, stared ahead and listened intently from the audience.

Palal told jurors that Davis held onto a visceral hatred for Shakur for decades that drove him to speak.

He said the defendant talked to the FBI in 1998 and again in 1999, admitting he had been in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting.

In 2009, he admitted to his role in the killing in an interview with Las Vegas police, Palal said.

“And now 30 years later, we’re going to ask you to finally hold Duane Davis accountable,” he said.

He also showed jurors the 2019 memoir that Davis co-authored, “Compton Street Legend,” which the prosecution will use and that the defense fought to keep out of the trial, along with several of the defendant’s interviews.

Defense argues that the book is fictionalized

Sanft says Davis co-authored “Compton Street Legend” to make money, not to tell the truth. He argues it’s impossible to tell which parts, if any, Davis wrote and which parts author Yusuf Jah penned.

Jah, who is on the list of potential witnesses, recently told an investigator he didn’t believe Davis fully read his own book, according to court documents.

On Monday, Sanft said Davis was not charged years ago “because they knew he was full of crap,” KLAS-TV reported.

“There’s no facts,” he said, to back up what Davis said in his book.

The defense attorney also pointed to missing documents in the original investigation and distrust between police departments.

He called one detective’s work “biased,” “sloppy” and “incomplete.” He said retired Detective Clifford Mogg read portions of Davis’ book into the record as if it were fact, but said Mogg didn’t verify its claims.

Prosecutors say the book is sensationalized but that they’ll show “what is true, what is exaggeration, and what is an outright lie,” they wrote in court documents.

Davis recently told Las Vegas television station Fox 5 that he actually wasn’t there the night Shakur was shot. In his book, though, he says he carpooled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas that night to watch the same boxing match Shakur attended. It describes where he stayed and the events before and after Shakur was shot. 

Witnesses describe the night Tupac was shot

Retired Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale was the first of the dozens of witnesses the prosecution plans to call at the trial. He recounted how he and another officer stopped a car carrying Knight and Shakur because the vehicle didn’t have a license plate. They let the pair go with a warning.

About 10 minutes later, the officers responded to a shooting call and found EMTs pulling Shakur from the car. Dale said Knight had been grazed by bullets, but told the officers to take care of Shakur.

Dale jumped in the ambulance and tried to get Shakur to tell him who shot him. The retired officer said Shakur said something like, “No, we’ll take care of it.”

The trial’s first day moved quickly. Defense objections were rare, and the prosecution let witnesses be dismissed without redirect questioning after cross-examination.

Brent Becker, a former Las Vegas homicide detective, testified that Knight showed up to a police interview with attorneys, which Becker and other law enforcement officers thought was weird because Knight was a victim. Knight was timid, and his interview was practiced, Becker said.

“It was not the ‘Suge’ Knight I expected,” the detective said.

Knight told investigators that he didn’t know anything.

“I thought he lied to us,” Becker said.

Becker described the difficulty of getting witnesses to talk. The four names of the people inside the Cadillac that investigators “were leaning on” were Davis, Anderson, Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown, the detective said. But he noted he had no living witnesses to tell him who was in the Cadillac.

Ingrid Stokes testified that she and her friends were heading home from Las Vegas when they encountered Shakur and Knight, who were friends with a woman in Stokes’ group.

Knight invited them to a nightclub, she said, and they decided to meet them there.

The car Stokes was riding in was one lane over and a car length ahead of Knight’s vehicle when they heard gunshots while stopped at an intersection.

Stokes said they feared more gunfire and drove away, almost hitting a white four-door vehicle in the process.

When they returned to the scene, police made them sit on the sidewalk and treated them like suspects, she said. Stokes was scared to be seen in public talking about the case, worried about poor treatment from law enforcement and the potential for retribution.

“Snitches get stitches,” she said.