Tupac Shakur murder trial opens in Las Vegas, 30 years on

Opening statements began on Monday, August 17 in the Las Vegas trial of Duane "Keefe D" Davis, the former Compton gang leader charged with murder over the shooting of Tupac Shakur in 1996. Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis did not pull the trigger but planned the shooting in retaliation for the beating of his nephew, and that they would learn it from Davis himself. Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty and faces life in prison.

The prosecution case runs on Davis talking. Palal said he spoke to the FBI in 1998 and again in 1999, described his role to a federal task force in 2008 while being questioned about the killing of the Notorious B.I.G., and admitted it again to Las Vegas police in 2009. He also co-wrote a 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, which the defense fought to keep out of the trial and which prosecutors will lean on heavily.

Prosecutors put the killing inside a gang rivalry rather than a rap feud, between the Southside Crips led by Davis and Mob Piru, a gang long tied to Death Row Records. Shakur was closely affiliated with Death Row, and Marion "Suge" Knight was in the BMW he was shot in. Hours earlier, video played in court showed Shakur's entourage attacking Davis' nephew Orlando Anderson in the MGM Grand lobby after a Mike Tyson fight.

The first witness was Garry Dale, a retired Las Vegas police officer who rode in the ambulance. He testified that Shakur was conscious and would not name who shot him, telling him only that they would take care of it. Shakur died six days later, at 25. A former Los Angeles detective testified remotely that Davis had briefly been a suspect in the killing of the Notorious B.I.G.; the judge told jurors that police do not believe he was involved.

Michael Sanft, defending, called the prosecution's account fiction and told jurors there are no facts placing his client in the car. He said Davis had never been charged before because investigators knew he was not credible, pointed to missing documents from the original investigation and to distrust between police departments, and called one detective's work biased, sloppy and incomplete. Undermining his own client's credibility was the strategy, and he said so openly outside court.

A jury of 10 women and six men was seated on August 14, and the trial is expected to run about a month with 35 to 45 prosecution witnesses. The three other men who were in the Cadillac have all died. Suge Knight has said he would wreck the trial from the stand if either side calls him, and Shakur's stepbrother Mopreme is cautiously optimistic about it. The case runs alongside the rest of our legal and hip-hop coverage.