Key facts
- Duane "Keffe D" Davis is charged with orchestrating the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.
- Prosecutors allege the shooting was in retaliation for an earlier fight involving Davis' nephew.
- Davis' defense claims the case is based on a flawed investigation and fictionalized accounts.
- A witness testified that Tupac Shakur refused to identify his shooter after being shot.
- Davis' memoir, in which he details the events of the night, is being used as evidence.
In the opening day of the Tupac Shakur murder trial, prosecutors presented Duane "Keffe D" Davis, 63, as the mastermind behind the 1996 drive-by shooting that killed the rapper. Prosecutors allege Davis orchestrated the killing in retaliation for a fight his nephew, Orlando Anderson, had with Shakur hours earlier.
Davis has pleaded not guilty, with his defense attorneys arguing the case is built on a flawed, decades-long investigation and that his co-authored memoir, which details the events, is largely fictionalized. "What facts do they have after 30 years?" asked attorney Michael Sanft.
The prosecution's first witness, former Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer Garry Dale, testified that he was with Shakur in an ambulance after the shooting. He stated that Shakur refused to provide any information about who had shot him, saying, "We'll take care of it."
Prosecutors contend that Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, was the "on-ground, on-site commander" who "ordered the death" of Shakur. Witness Ingrid Stokes testified that she heard gunshots after a vehicle began tailgating theirs, stating, "All hell broke loose."
The case hinges on the East Coast vs. West Coast rap rivalries and gang turf wars of the 1990s, with police citing a lack of cooperation from witnesses as a reason the case went cold for nearly three decades. Davis himself made public statements and published a memoir in 2019, claiming he was a passenger in the vehicle from which the shots were fired and that he gave the gun to his nephew, Anderson.
Opening statements began after a week of jury selection, with more witnesses, experts, and investigators expected to testify in the coming weeks.