Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, faces a single count of murder with a deadly weapon in the death of Tupac Shakur, and he’s pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say he was the shot caller who supplied the gun, ordering the hit to avenge his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, who’d been beaten by Shakur’s entourage at the MGM Grand hours earlier.
The case sat cold for years until Davis started talking. His 2019 memoir “Compton Street Legend” and a string of interviews revived the investigation, and prosecutors say without his own words, no one would have been charged. The book, which he co-authored, will be central at trial: it describes him passing a Glock to the back seat, then a shooter opening fire when they pulled alongside Shakur and Suge Knight near the Strip on September 7, 1996.
Shakur was shot multiple times and died six days later. Knight, who was driving, survived and is now serving 28 years for a fatal hit-and-run. No weapon was found in their car, a retired detective testified, undercutting Davis’s claim that Shakur reached first.
Davis’s attorneys argue there’s no evidence he directed anything and that the state leans on witnesses who weren’t there. If convicted, he faces life without parole. The trial is expected to run about a month.
- u”I hope that the trial is fair, and we find out the truth,” said Shakur’s stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, who called the last 30 years exhausting.
