After 30 years, a trial may resolve questions about Tupac Shakur’s killing

A trial slated to start next week could answer longstanding questions about the slaying of hip hop icon Tupac Shakur, one of the most notorious killings in recent Las Vegas history.

Shakur, 25, was shot four times on the night of Sept. 7, 1996, at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, near the Strip. He died Sept. 13 at University Medical Center.

No one was arrested in the killing — until 2023, when police took Duane Davis into custody outside his home in Henderson.

Now, 30 years after Shakur’s death, 63-year-old Davis is scheduled to face a Las Vegas jury that will determine whether or not he orchestrated the killing.

Jury selection is expected to begin Monday, and the trial may stretch into early September. The Clark County District Court is anticipating such great interest that it plans to use a lottery system to decide who will be able to sit in the courtroom.

In a memoir, Davis discussed the shooting of Shakur and his life as a leader of the South Side Compton Crips, a Los Angeles gang. He and his attorney have since disputed the authorship of the book, which involved a ghostwriter.

Davis, who is known as “Keffe D,” had made numerous other statements about the case, including in media and law enforcement interviews.

The memoir, Compton Street Legend, says Davis “tossed” a gun into the back seat of the Cadillac in which he was riding at the time. Then, a man in the back seat used the gun to commit the shooting, according to the book.

Police have said Davis is the last person alive out of the four who were in the car.

Prosecutors have said Davis was the “shot-caller” who came up with the plan to exact revenge on the rapper and Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight in retaliation for an attack by Shakur and his entourage against Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson, earlier that night at the MGM Grand.

The book indicated that Anderson and Deandrae “Dre” Smith were in the back seat, but he did not say who fired the gun. Anderson was killed in a 1998 shooting. Smith died in 2004, according to the Associated Press.

Prosecutors have also said Davis’ own words in the book and other public statements drove a renewed effort to investigate Shakur’s killing.

“Had Mr. Davis never opened his mouth, had he never decided to take money and go on BET and talk about this situation, had he decided to never write the book, he would not, probably, have ever been prosecuted for the crime,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said recently. “But once he decides to write that book in 2019 and describe this situation, we are entitled to prove up what he’s saying is true.”

District Judge Carli Kierny, who will preside over the trial, previously rejected a request from defense attorney Michael Sanft to suppress the book.

Though it is unclear exactly how Sanft will attempt to defend Davis at trial, one previous attorney on the case, confronted with Davis’ past statements, took the unusual approach of attacking his own client’s credibility.

Defense lawyer Carl Arnold described Davis as “a liar” who could not be trusted.

“Just because he says he’s here, doesn’t mean that he was here,” he said previously.

Robert Draskovich, another attorney who represented Davis, said the defendant put his name on the book based on “a financial incentive.”

“It’s not so much an issue of being a liar in that we live in a society now of dual personas,” Draskovich told reporters last year. “We have public personas. We have personas in reality. We have online personas.”

Beyond the immediate conflict between Anderson and Shakur, authorities have said the killing was part of an ongoing feud between rival gangs, which were each tied to a record company.

According to prosecutors, the Bloods-associated Mob Piru gang had ties to Death Row Records and the South Side Crips were associated with Bad Boy Records, a label owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Members of both gangs were in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting for the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon fight at the MGM Grand.

Shakur was a passenger in a black BMW when a white Cadillac pulled alongside and someone fired on Shakur, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported at the time.

Knight, who was driving, was grazed in the head by a bullet.

The Cadillac fled.

Rushed to UMC, Shakur — who was shot in the chest, thigh and arm — underwent multiple operations and had his right lung removed before he succumbed to his injuries.

Now-retired Metropolitan Police Department homicide Detective Clifford Mogg testified to grand jurors that in Davis’ house, investigators found relevant evidence, including an album with many clippings about the shooting of Shakur.

One of the articles Davis kept was a Los Angeles Times story naming Anderson as a possible suspect, he testified.

After Davis was arrested, video showed that an officer asked him: “So what they got you for, man?”

“Uh, the biggest case in Las Vegas history,” he said.

But, he added, “I ain’t worried.”