Ex-Gang Leader Charged In 1996 Tupac Shakur Killing Pleads Not Guilty In Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — A former Southern California street gang leader pleaded not guilty Thursday to organizing a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996 that killed Tupac Shakur.

Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, the only person still alive who was in the car from which shots were fired and the only person ever prosecuted in the case, stood cuffed before Clark County District Judge Tierra Jones.

Davis was defended in court by special public defenders Robert Arroyo and Charles Cano on Thursday. Davis’ bid to hire defense counsel Ross Goodman was unsuccessful. Goodman stated two weeks ago that prosecutors lack witnesses and critical evidence, such as a gun or car, for the murder that occurred 27 years ago.

Davis stood in dark-blue jail garb and answered a short series of questions before entering his plea on Thursday, telling the judge that he attended “a year in college,” was not under the influence of any drugs, medication, or alcohol, and understood he had been charged with murder.

Davis, 60, is a native of Compton, California. He was apprehended on September 29 outside a home in suburban Henderson where Las Vegas police had served a search warrant on July 17, reigniting interest in one of hip-hop music’s most intriguing mysteries. Davis is still being held without bond, did not testify before the grand jury that indicted him and refuses to talk with The Associated Press from jail.

A former Southern California street gang leader pleaded not guilty Thursday to organizing a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996 that killed Tupac Shakur.

According to the indictment, Davis obtained and gave a gun to someone in the back seat of a Cadillac before the car-to-car gunfire that killed Shakur and injured rap music entrepreneur Marion “Suge” Knight at an intersection near the Las Vegas Strip. Shakur passed away a week later. He was 25.

Knight, aged 58, is receiving a 28-year jail sentence for the 2015 death of a Compton businessman. He has not responded to messages requesting comment on Davis’ arrest sent through his attorneys.

Prosecutors claim that Shakur’s death in Las Vegas was the result of a rivalry between East Coast Bloods gang members and West Coast Crips gang members, including Davis, for dominance in a musical genre known as “gangsta rap.”

According to the grand jury, the Las Vegas shooting on September 7, 1996, was payback for a confrontation hours earlier at a Las Vegas Strip casino involving Shakur and Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.

Prosecutors told a grand jury that Davis implicated himself in the assassination in repeated interviews and a 2019 tell-all biography about his past as a member of a Compton Crips faction. Davis has claimed that he procured a.40-caliber handgun and handed it to Anderson, a member of Davis’ gang, in the back seat of a Cadillac. However, he has not named Anderson as the shooter.

Wallace, popularly known as Biggie Smalls, was shot and assassinated in Los Angeles six months after Shakur’s death in March 1997.

Anderson, who was 22 at the time, denied any participation in Shakur’s death and died two years later in a shooting in his hometown of Compton. The other rear-seat passenger and the Cadillac’s driver were also killed.

Davis wrote in his book that he told authorities what he knew about the murders of Shakur and gang rival Notorious B.I.G, whose legal name is Christopher Wallace, in 2010 to protect himself and 48 of his Southside Compton Crips gang associates from prosecution and the possibility of life sentences in prison.

Wallace, popularly known as Biggie Smalls, was shot and assassinated in Los Angeles six months after Shakur’s death in March 1997.

Shakur is regarded as one of the most influential and diverse rappers ever. He had five number-one albums, was nominated for six Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, and was honored with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this year.

SOURCE – (AP)