The Trial for the Murder of Tupac Shakur Starts Monday

A trial date has been set for Duane “Keffe D” Davis, charged with orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur. According to the Associated Press, prosecution isn’t interested in proving who actually pulled the trigger on Shakur. Instead, the trial intends to prove Davis was calling the shots and that it was his gun that was used. The prosecution also says if he hadn’t written about the crime in his 2019 tell-all memoir, the case would have remained cold.

On the night of September 7, 1996, gunfire came from a Cadillac holding Davis, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, Deandre “Freaky” Smith, and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown. Shots hit Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight. Knight survived his injuries, while Shakur died a week later. Of the four men in the Cadillac, only Davis is still alive.

The grand jury indictment states that Shakur’s killing was the result of two overlapping, long-running feuds. One was between Knight’s Death Row Records and Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Bad Boy Records, and the other was between the Blood-affiliated Mob Piru and the South Side Compton Crips. Witnesses claim the Crips provided protection for Bad Boy, while Mob Piru was affiliated with Death Row. Allegedly, Davis orchestrated the hit on Shakur as revenge for the rapper and his entourage beating up Baby Lane at the MGM Grand. This claim is backed up by Davis’s memoir. “We couldn’t let no record company studio gangsters do us like that,” Davis writes. According to the book, Davis saw Shakur reach for a weapon, so “one of my guys from the back seat grabbed the Glock and started bustin’ back.”

Davis is charged with a single count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further, or assist a criminal gang. He has been imprisoned for his role in the killing since 2023, entering a plea of not guilty. If convicted, he faces life in prison.