Thirty years later, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the man suspected of killing Tupac Shakur, is finally on trial. The case revolves around his book about the crime.
In Las Vegas, Duane “Keffe D” Davis is on trial for the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.
In 2019, Davis published a book in which he described the time Tupac was shot.
Davis has entered a not guilty plea, but prosecutors are utilising portions of the book as evidence.
On Monday, August 10, over thirty years after rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in 1996, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the only person ever accused in the crime, went on trial in Las Vegas.
Prosecutors claim Davis, 63, committed a single felony of murder with a deadly weapon with the intention of encouraging, supporting, or aiding a criminal gang in Shakur’s demise. He entered a ‘not guilty’ plea and has been incarcerated since late 2023.
In 2019, Davis published “Compton Street Legend,” a tell-all book in which he described the time Shakur was murdered.
The book opens in Las Vegas on the night of September 7, 1996, describing his plan to confront Shakur and Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight over an earlier fight and details how he got a gun and got into a car with three others before spotting Tupac’s vehicle.
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That account has now become the central piece of evidence against him at trial, even as he maintains a not-guilty plea.
Davis’s defence is anticipated to concentrate on the portions of the book that can be proven to be untrue to discredit it as evidence, while prosecutors have recognised that the book is “salacious, prone to hyperbole” and contains errors but maintain that it primarily reflects the verifiable facts of Davis’s life.
Davis has stated that he was in the car at the time of the incident and that he gave his nephew Orlando Anderson, who is thought to have been the gunman, the gun used in the shooting. Anderson passed away before being charged in relation to the crime.
Shakur’s killing has remained one of hip-hop’s most notorious mysteries for nearly 30 years. Grand jury transcripts reviewed by prosecutors describe the shooting as the culmination of a long-running feud between rival record labels, Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records, and rival gang factions, Mob Piru and the South Side Compton Crips.
The trial is expected to last about a month, and legal observers have noted it likely will not definitively establish who pulled the trigger. Shakur’s stepbrother, Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, described the last three decades as exhausting for the family, saying he remains “cautiously optimistic” that the trial will bring the truth to light.
