The trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former gang leader accused of orchestrating the 1996 murder of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur, opened on Monday in Las Vegas, nearly 30 years after the drive-by shooting.
Jury selection began for the proceedings, which are expected to last a month. Davis, 63, faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon.
While prosecutors do not expect the trial to establish who pulled the trigger, they aim to prove that Davis—a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips—ordered the hit and supplied the firearm used in the September 1996 shooting, which occurred following a Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas.
The case re-examines the violent 1990s bi-coastal rivalry between West Coast-based Death Row Records, affiliated with the Mob Piru gang, and East Coast-based Bad Boy Records, which employed the South Side Compton Crips for security.
Prosecutors allege the shooting was motivated by revenge after Shakur and Death Row co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight assaulted Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson, in a casino lobby earlier that evening. Later that night, shots were fired from a white Cadillac containing Davis and Anderson, fatally wounding Shakur, who died six days later at age 25.
The investigation stalled for decades until the publication of Davis’s 2019 memoir and subsequent media interviews, in which he admitted to being in the vehicle and handing the gun to the backseat passengers. He was arrested in September 2023.
Davis has since pleaded not guilty, claiming his earlier statements and memoir were fabricated by a ghostwriter to boost sales.
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