The man charged with murder in the killing of Tupac Shakur has claimed that his past comments regarding the shooting were simply “entertainment”.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 60, was charged with the murder of the legendary hip-hop artist this September – 27 years after Shakur was fatally wounded from a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.
A Nevada judge set a June 3, 2024 date for the trial last month. It came shortly after Davis pleaded not guilty to the charge of open murder with use of a deadly weapon with a gang enhancement.
As The Guardian reports, Davis – who has been denied bail since he was first arrested – has asked a judge to put him on house arrest ahead of his trial. His legal representatives are also requesting that the court establish a “reasonable bail”.
“Duane should not be denied bail in this case. It cannot be said that the proof is evident and the presumption great that Duane is guilty of first-degree murder for the death of Shakur,” the motion read (via Rolling Stone).
“This Court should release Duane on house arrest with electronic monitoring pending trial.”
A January 2 hearing date was set this week regarding Davis’ bid to be released on no more than $100,000 bail.
The bail request is on the basis that an “astounding amount of hearsay and speculative testimony” emerged during grand jury proceedings.
The lawyers pushed back on state reliance on excerpts from Davis’ 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend. They claimed that the former gangster-turned-author’s comments in the book were nothing more than “entertainment”.
“The truthfulness of the content of the interviews was never verified. The book and interviews were done for entertainment purposes and to make money from a situation that [Greg] Kading and others had already profited from,” Davis’ lawyers wrote.
Additionally, they maintained that Davis had “moved on from his old lifestyle”. The document said that the suspect was protected by a 2008 agreement with the FBI and Los Angeles police that gave him immunity from prosecution in Shakur’s killing.
The tell-all Compton Street Legend sees Davis describe orchestrating the drive-by shooting that resulted in Shakur’s death and wounded Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight in September 1996.
The legal representatives also cited Davis’ health as one of the reasons for their bail request. They claimed that their client is not receiving sufficient medical attention in jail after having colon cancer, which they said is now in remission.
“He is not getting his bi-monthly oncologist check-ups. Additionally, his heart health has declined,” the lawyers said. “He was put back on a group of medications to try to get things under control.
“He has to take these medications in the jail because he is unable to do the things necessary to maintain proper health. His diet in jail is terrible. He is given heavily-processed meals full of sodium that barely pass as food.”
Davis, a former member of the gang Compton Crips, is the uncle of the late Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson who’d previously been identified as a suspect in Shakur’s murder but was never charged with any crimes. Anderson was killed in a shooting in 1998.
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty for Davis, who is the only surviving suspect in the case. However, he could face the rest of his life behind bars if convicted.
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