Tupac Shakur Murder Trial Opens 30 Years After Rapper’s Death: ‘An Act of Revenge’

Three decades after the 1996 drive-by shooting of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, a prosecutor gave jurors an unflinching account of the killing on Monday, accusing Duane “ Keffe D ” Davis of organizing the attack as “an act of revenge.”

In his opening statement on the first day of Davis’ murder trial, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors they would not have to take the state’s word for it. Davis, he said, had described his own role in a “secret 2008 interview” with authorities.

He played snippets of the interview as Davis, dressed in a blue suit and tie, looked at a screen in the courtroom. In the recording, Davis described making a U-turn and pulling up alongside a black BMW carrying Shakur and Suge Knight near the Las Vegas Strip and handing a gun to a person in the back seat before shots rang out, according to a livestream of the trial from CourtTV .

“Duane Davis says if they were on his side of the vehicle, he would have shot them himself,” Palal tells the jury. Instead, it was Davis’ “beloved nephew” Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson in the backseat who fired the gun. He said the motive was Davis’ “visceral anger” over Shakur getting in a fistfight with Anderson inside the MGM Grand after a Mike Tyson boxing match hours earlier.

“Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But what he did do was plan the retaliation for the beating of his nephew. You will learn that Duane Davis got the gun. You will learn that he got into a white Cadillac. You will learn when the opportunity presented itself for retribution, Duane Davis made sure that the shooters are armed and ready to execute their revenge. And remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself,” Palal said.

In his dueling opening statement, Davis’ defense lawyer Michael Sanft asked jurors why his client was never charged after his alleged confession to authorities in 2008. “It’s because they knew he was full of crap, otherwise they would have. Why wouldn’t they?” Sanft said. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

The lawyer also questioned why investigators failed to conduct follow-up interviews to try to corroborate what Davis said. “Is it because they just didn’t care about Tupac Shakur or his life? Or is it because they looked into it and realized, we can’t verify this information, we don’t believe this is even true,” he said.

Sanft suggested Davis wasn’t even in Vegas the night of the shooting. He said investigators never recovered any receipts, credit card transactions, or even a picture of Davis at the MGM Grand that night, though he claimed in his book he was near the front of the Tyson bout, seated near celebrities. “When you look at this relevant timeline again, and you see the length of time, ask yourself what facts do they have to even put Keffe D in a car in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996.”

Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to a single murder count and has been held without bail since his arrest in September 2023 .