What Gets Read Aloud At Tupac's Murder Trial

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Nevada is trying a murder case with no murder weapon. The gun that killed Tupac Shakur on September 7th of 1996, 30 years ago now, God, I know, I feel old, has never been recovered. No DNA connects Duane Keffe D Davis to the shooting. The man prosecutors say fired the shots was Orlando Anderson. He denied it. He was killed in Compton in 1998 and will obviously never take the stand. He's been dead longer than he was alive. What the state has is a book Davis wrote himself. Judge Carli Kierny ruled it admissible, which means the jury gets to hear it. LasVegas police had Davis' statements in hand for 14 years before anyone actually arrested him. Davis is now 63 years old. He faces one count of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote further or assist a criminal gang. The last part is a gang enhancement, which means extra prison time because prosecutors say the crime was committed for a gang. He is pled not guilty. He has been in custody since his arrest on September 29, 2023 in Henderson, Nevada. The trial is expected to run about a month. If the jury convicts him, he faces life without parole. Tupac Shakur, 25 years old in 1996 He's also now been dead longer than he was alive. He put out four albums and acted in five films. He was still writing. He was on his way to be one of the biggest stars in hip hop ever at that moment in time. And if you don't know, you don't know because you weren't there. Back in 1996, the world of hip hop, the world of all of that was very different than it is today.
And on the night of September 7th, 1996, he was in the passenger seat of a black BMW. Marion Shugnite, the founder of Death Row Records, was driving. They just left the MGM Grand after the Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon fight. Earlier that evening, surveillance cameras inside the casino at the MGM recorded Tupac and Knight and their entourage beating a man near a bank of elevators in a fountain. The fight lasted about two minutes before security broke it up. That man was Orlando Anderson. It was Davis' nephew. And a member of the Southside Compton Crips, Tupac and Knight ran with the mob prude Bloods. Anderson declined to press charges and he left the casino. The footage still exists. You've probably seen it. Prosecutors intend to play it for the jury as the motive for basically everything that followed. Attack at the MGM, retaliation at Flamingo and Colvold, which is where he was shot. Later that night, a white Cadillac pulled up alongside the BMW at that red light near the Strip. Someone in the back seat opened fire. Tupac was hit multiple times. Knight was grazed. Tupac was taken to University Medical Center and died six days later on September 13th of 1996
For 27 years, nobody was charged. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had names and had theories about the motive. What they didn't have was a case any prosecutor would take to a grand jury. In 2008, Davis sat down with a joint task force that included the LAPD. They were investigating the murder of Christopher Wallace, the notorious BIG., Biggie Smalls, who was shot in Los Angeles just six months after Tupac died. A lot of people at the time and still to this day connect the two and say it was retaliation for the murder of Tupac. During those interviews, Davis talked about the Las Vegas shooting. His attorneys later called that arrangement a proffer and a proffer. It works like this. You sit down with investigators and tell them what you know.
And they agree not to use it against you. The task force was not investigating Tupac's murder. They were building a case in Los Angeles. What Davis told them about Las Vegas was extra. Then Davis went public.
In 2018, he appeared in a BET documentary and discussed the shooting on camera.
He'd been diagnosed with cancer and told interviewers he had nothing left to lose. In 2019, his memoir came out, Compton Street Legend. Prosecutors told the court that Davis discussed his alleged involvement in nearly every form imaginable.
They say a book is a different kind of evidence than a police interview. A proffer transcript is a document prosecutors have to explain. They have to tell the jury what deal was on the table and what pressure the man was under. A memoir, they say, works completely differently.
He chose the words. He chose when to publish them. His name is on the cover. Prosecutors can read it out loud. In court, the book was released through a small publisher and sold openly. Anyone could buy it, including a Las Vegas homicide detective. Grand jury transcripts framed the killing as a gang retaliation tied to a war between two record labels, death row records on one side, aligned with mob prude bloods, bad boy records on the other, aligned with the Southside Compton Crips, which was Davis' crew. Witnesses testified before the grand jury that the Crips provided protection for bad boy at events and on the road. The two sides have been in contact for years before that night in Las Vegas. Prosecutors are not arguing that Davis pulled the trigger. Their theory is that he was the shot caller, meaning the person who gives the order. They allege he provided the gun and directed the retaliation from the front passenger seat. A Clark County Grand Jury indicted Davis in September of 23 Grand juries hear only the prosecution's evidence with no defense case and no cross examination at that sort of stage. The indictment came 36 days after Las Vegas police executed a search warrant at his Henderson home. That search happened in July 23, 14 years after they first had his statements.