LAS VEGAS — A prosecutor said Monday that while few have been willing to speak about the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur, Duane "Keffe D" Davis is the "one person who has a hard time being silent."
"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," Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors at the start of Davis' Las Vegas trial. "Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself."
Davis, 63, could get life in prison if he's convicted of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer in the defense opening called the prosecution's narrative "fiction."
Palal showed jurors video of Shakur's entourage attacking Davis' nephew Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson outside the boxing match at the MGM Grand hours before the shooting on Sept. 7, 1996.
Davis spent the next two hours planning how to get even, said Palal, and Shakur was gunned down "in an act of revenge."
Shakur remains a cultural icon and is considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time, despite dying at 25.
What he told the FBI and investigators
In a 2008 interview with a federal task force investigating the killing of Shakur's rival, the Notorious B.I.G., Davis instead talked about the Shakur shooting. He described handing a gun to the men in the backseat of a white Cadillac that fired on a black BMW with Shakur and Marion "Suge" Knight inside.
As prosecutors played audio of Davis explaining the moment Shakur was shot, members of Shakur's family, including his stepbrother Maurice "Mopreme" Shakur, stared ahead and listened intently from the audience.
Palal told jurors 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," Palal said.
He also showed jurors the 2019 memoir that Davis co-authored, "Compton Street Legend," that the prosecution will use and that the defense fought to keep out of the trial, along with several of the defendant's interviews.
How Davis' legal team is defending him
Davis, wearing a blue suit and tie, sat quietly with his hands folded on the table in front of him, occasionally nodding along as his attorney gave his opening, and often scanned the room during testimony to see who was in the gallery.
"What they are telling you, they are representing as fact, when it's really fiction," Michael Sanft said. "There's no facts."
He said Davis wasn't previously charged because law enforcement knew that he was "full of crap."
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."
Sanft said outside court at the end of the day that he thought the 30 years that had elapsed would help Davis.
"The length of time is going to be a huge problem for people trying to recall things, to remember things," the lawyer said. "That's just not how it works."
Asked about the oddity of calling his client "full of crap" and similar things, he said, "We all have a family member who's like that."
Briefly a suspect in Notorious B.I.G.'s death
Former Los Angeles Police Department detective Fred Miller — assigned to the investigation of the 1997 shooting death of the Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace — testified remotely and said that Davis had briefly been suspected in that shooting.
Davis admitted to being present at a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles where Wallace and Sean "Diddy" Combs were guests. Wallace was shot as he was leaving.
Sanft objected to the inclusion of the testimony. The judge, with prosecutors' agreement, told jurors that police do not believe Davis was involved.
Most eyewitnesses are no longer alive
The story of the drive-by shooting has long gripped the hip-hop community, partly because no one was charged until Davis was indicted in 2023.
The other three men riding in the Cadillac have all died in the years since.
Retired Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale was the first of the 35 to 45 witnesses the prosecution plans to call at the trial expected to last about a month.
He testified that he and another officer stopped Knight and Shakur's car for missing a license plate, warned them and let them go.
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 asked Shakur who shot him. The retired officer said that Shakur said something like "no, we'll take care of it."
Brent Becker, a former Las Vegas homicide detective, testified that Knight showed up to a police interview with attorneys, which he thought was odd because Knight was a victim. Knight was timid, his interview was practiced and he told investigators he knew nothing, Becker said.
"I thought he lied to us," Becker said in video testimony.
Becker said it was difficult to get other witnesses to talk and they "were leaning on" Davis, Anderson, Deandrae "Freaky" Smith and Terry "Bubble Up" Brown as the men in the Cadillac, but had no living witnesses who could identify them.
Witnesses describe the night Tupac was shot
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.
Stokes said they drove off in fear and almost hit 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.
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