The murder trial linked to the death of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur will officially begin with jury selection in Las Vegas on Monday, nearly three years after Duane “Keffe D” Davis was first arrested and charged in 2023, and almost 30 years since Shakur was killed.
Davis stands accused of orchestrating Shakur’s murder and faces a count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang in the rapper’s death.
Shakur’s death is one of the most infamous unresolved incidents in pop culture and was the subject of significant skepticism and theories for decades. The rapper was shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996, riding in the passenger seat while former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight was driving. Shakur was hospitalized and died six days later.
Knight, who is in prison for manslaughter over an unrelated fatal hit-and-run case, recently gave an interview to ABC News, where he said he wouldn’t cooperate with authorities. “This trial has nothing to do with me and if somebody brings me there, it’s gonna hurt whoever brings me there,” he said.
Davis, a self-admitted former South Side Compton Crips gang leader, was officially arrested in late September of 2023, months after authorities in Las Vegas had issued a search warrant in July. Shakur’s murder has long been speculated as the culmination of the intense East Coast/West Coast Hip-Hop rivalry of the ’90s. Death Row, where Shakur was signed, was affiliated with the Bloods. Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records, Death Row’s east coast rival, was allegedly tied to the Crips. Combs, currently serving a 50-month prison sentence on prostitution charges, has frequently denied playing a part in Shakur’s death.
Davis himself isn’t accused of firing the gun but providing the weapon and helping orchestrate the crime. He’d long been speculated as a potential suspect in the case, and he himself had previously spoken about his involvement, including in his memoir Compton Street Legend back in 2019, where he said he’d provided the gun used in the shooting. The book served as a key piece of evidence from the prosecution thus far, though Davis has pleaded not guilty and has distanced himself from the contents of the memoir, saying the information in the book was false and designed to sell copies.
As Davis’s legal team said last month, per the New York Times: “We’re putting way too much credence and value and weight on statements that are made for entertainment purposes only. Not a confession to a priest, not a confession to a police officer, but rather to promote a book, to sell a product.”
Davis is the only person to have been arrested over Shakur’s killing since his 1996 death. Jury selection itself is expected to take several days, and the trial is expected to take about a month. If convicted, Davis faces life in prison.
