Davis Trial in Tupac Killing; Pleads Not Guilty

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former South Side Compton Crips leader, goes on trial in Las Vegas for murder with a deadly weapon in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, with prosecutors alleging he orchestrated the drive-by and provided the gun. Davis has pleaded not guilty, and jury selection is underway as the trial is expected to last about a month. The case has been reignited by Davis’s own 2019 memoir and public statements in which he admits to involvement, though his defense argues these sources are unreliable and seeks to exclude them as evidence. The trial occurs against a backdrop of the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop feud, with Death Row Records facing off against Bad Boy Records and rival gangs such as the Crips and Mob Piru. Shakur was shot in a Las Vegas drive-by on the night of September 7, 1996, and died six days later; Suge Knight survived the attack. Family members and supporters are attending the proceedings as investigators and prosecutors push for the first conviction in the decades-old case.