Trial of former gang leader to begin over Tupac Shakur murder

Prosecutors allege Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis ordered killing and provided gun in Las Vegas drive-by shooting 30 years ago

Jury selection began on Monday in Las Vegas as the murder trial of a former gang leader finally got under way decades after the shooting of the rapper Tupac Shakur , one of the most high-profile unsolved killings in the US.

It was thought likely to take at least the rest of the week to seat a jury for the trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, in which prosecutors aim to show that Davis, 63, the one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips gang in California, ordered the killing and provided the gun for the fatal attack on Shakur.

About 75 potential jurors were called to the courthouse on Monday to be questioned ⁠about their ability to be fair and impartial in such a high-profile trial. Davis faces a potential life sentence without parole if convicted.

Shakur, 25, was gunned down at the height of his career, on 7 September 1996, as he sat in the passenger seat of a black BMW with the music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight in the Nevada tourist city, where the rap star had watched a boxing match featuring Mike Tyson and was on his way to a club to perform. Knight survived the shooting.

Davis is the only person to be charged in the killing and is accused of murder with a deadly weapon – even though he is not alleged to have fired the shots himself.

The proceedings are expected to last a month to five weeks before the judge, Carli Kierny. However, the trial remains unlikely to make clear who fired the fatal shots.

William Lesane, who said he was Shakur’s cousin, told reporters outside the courtroom that the trial was the culmination of 30 years of grief and trauma for his family.

“Hopefully we’ll find out some new information. And more importantly, the right person is charged and convicted for Tupac’s murder,” Lesane said.

Davis is the only person still alive out of the group that prosecutors believe attacked Shakur and Knight that night. They plan to present as evidence material from Davis’s tell-all book, Compton Street Legend, which was published in 2019 and gives a vivid account of the shooting.

The death of Shakur, also known as 2Pac, has prompted endless debate among music fans over who did it and why . The rapper was a key figure in a hip-hop rivalry pitting the US east coast against the west coast.

Known for hits such as California Love and All Eyez on Me, Shakur – the son of a Black Panther – was raised in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem and Baltimore, Maryland, but quickly became the epitome of a California bad boy when he signed with the Los Angeles-based Death Row Records.

The trial will revisit the battle between Death Row, founded by Marion “Suge” Knight, and Bad Boy Records, the east coast label created by Sean “Diddy” Combs and featuring Christopher “the Notorious BIG” Wallace, who was murdered in March 1997.

Prosecutors say Death Row Records was protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang that was part of the wider Bloods alliance. Knight was affiliated with the group. Bad Boy Records had hired the rival group South Side Compton Crips, led by Davis, as bodyguards.

After the Tyson fight at the MGM Grand casino, Knight and Shakur attacked Davis’s nephew, the Crips member Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, in retribution for an alleged assault on a Death Row employee. Davis was out for revenge, the prosecution says.

Later that night, a white Cadillac carrying Davis, Anderson and others pulled up beside Shakur’s car in Las Vegas . Shots were fired from the Cadillac and Shakur was fatally wounded.

The investigation sputtered for decades because of a lack of evidence, but the cold case was revived after Davis’s memoirs, in which says he handed a pistol from where he was in the front seat to those in the back seat of the Cadillac, which had pulled up alongside Shakur’s BMW.

These compromising revelations were consistent with remarks Davis had made previously to reporters. But this time, they led to his arrest, in September 2023 .

Davis has since backtracked and pleaded not guilty , saying there is no evidence against him and his co-author merely inflated a tale.

In May, the rapper’s stepbrother Maurice Shakur filed a wrongful death lawsuit in civil court .

“There remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes,” his complaint says.

The suit cites a recent TV documentary series titled Sean Combs: The Reckoning, in which Davis says in an interview with police that Combs, now in prison himself, offered him $1m to kill Shakur.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed reporting