A trial on the murder of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur finally began in Las Vegas on Monday, three decades removed from Shakur’s death in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting, with Duane “Keffe D” Davis accused of orchestrating the killing.
The prosecution and Davis’s defense gave their opening statements on Monday morning, with Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal telling jurors that Davis arranged the murder in “an act of revenge,” as CBS News reported, after Shakur had attacked Davis’s nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.
Davis, who was arrested and charged with murder in 2023, is the only person to have ever been arrested in the infamous case. He published a memoir in 2019, Compton Street Legend, in which he said he provided the gun used in the crime, which has become a key piece of evidence in the prosecution’s case.
“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger,” Palal said. “But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew. Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”
Davis’s defense attorney Michael Sanft, however, encouraged the jury during his opening statement to treat the memoir as fiction, with the New York Times reporting that Sanft referred to the memoir as “bullshit,” further saying Davis “was never charged for any of what he said during that time period, and it’s because they knew he was full of crap.”
Several witnesses took the stand on Monday during the first day of the trial: Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale, who responded to the incident the night of the shooting; Ingrid Stokes, a woman in a nearby car when the shooting occurred; former homicide detective Brent Becker; and former LAPD police officer Fred Miller, one of the detectives who investigated the murder of Notorious B.I.G.
Shakur’s murder has long been one of the most notorious unsolved cases in modern pop culture. He was shot in Las Vegas in 1996, riding in the passenger seat while Suge Knight drove. He died six days after the shooting.
The case reflected how gang violence became intertwined with the fierce East Coast/West Coast Hip-Hop rivalry that developed in the ’90s. Shakur’s label Death Row was said to be affiliated with the Bloods, and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records with the crips. Davis was a leader of the South Side Compton Crips, and the defendant has previously said Combs had called for Shakur’s death. Combs, currently in prison, has consistently denied the claims.
As the Times noted, during Dale’s testimony, he recalled being at the scene just after Shakur was shot, with Shakur declining to say who shot him, telling him, “No, we’ll take care of it.”
During Becker’s testimony, as CNN reported, he recalled testimony from Knight, telling the court he was “timid” and that “I thought he lied to us. He just didn’t know anything.”
Miller was the final witness of the day, and day one concluded with the jury reviewing an extensive audio interview with Davis.
The trial will resume on Tuesday.
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