Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former gang leader charged with the 1996 drive-by shooting murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur, called just three witnesses before resting his defense at his Las Vegas trial in less than two hours on Thursday. Closing arguments in the closely watched case are set for Monday.
Davis’ lawyer, Michael Sanft, centered the defense on testimony from three former Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers in an effort to raise reasonable doubt. Former LVMPD Sgt. Stan Hyt and former Lt. Charlie Mangrum testified they were working overtime the night Shakur was shot, keeping an eye on the Las Vegas home of Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight, who was expected to host a party after boxer Mike Tyson won a bout at the MGM Grand.
Hyt and Mangrum said they saw a light-colored Cadillac arrive at the house and later leave as part of a convoy that included Knight driving Shakur in his BMW, according to a trial livestream from Law&Crime. Sanft apparently highlighted the testimony because witnesses later told police that it was a light-colored Cadillac that pulled alongside Knight’s BMW less than an hour later, when someone in the back seat opened fire, fatally wounding Shakur.
According to prosecutors, Davis, a leader of the South Side Compton Crips, was riding in the front passenger seat of the rented white Cadillac involved in the shooting. They allege he was the “shot-caller” that night and allowed his nephew, Orlando Anderson, to open fire on the BMW in retaliation for an attack by Shakur and his entourage on Anderson inside the MGM Grand about two hours earlier.
Suggesting that Knight had a light-colored Cadillac in his convoy could introduce more uncertainty. Sanft didn’t connect the dots, but other tips and theories about different alleged shooters have floated around for decades. On the second day of trial testimony, for instance, jurors heard about an alternate conspiracy theory that Knight’s security chief, Reggie Wright Jr., was involved in Shakur’s killing. Prosecutors raised the theory while questioning James McDonald, a former associate of Knight and member of the Mob Piru Bloods, who testified under a court order Aug. 18. McDonald, also known as “Mob James,” rejected the idea that Wright wanted Shakur dead as part of a power grab.
“It’s not true,” he testified. “If Reggie killed Tupac, then Death Row was over with. Tupac was the money source. Tupac was that guy at Death Row.”
Under cross-examination by Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo on Thursday, Mangrum said his report from that night included the license plate numbers of all the vehicles that entered Knight’s property. Asked whether homicide detectives in 1996 would have followed up on that information, he said yes.
Davis’ third and final witness was former Las Vegas Metropolitan Police homicide Det. Dan Long, who led the Shakur murder investigation from 2002 to 2017. Sanft questioned Long about other tips in the case and the history of the department’s investigative file, seeking to cast doubt on the thoroughness of the police work.
Long testified that the paper case file had to be “locked down” at one point because “curious” department employees were accessing it to read about the investigation. He also said some of his reports were later lost when the department switched electronic storage systems.
Sanft focused heavily on a 2009 interview Long conducted with Davis in Los Angeles, about a year after Davis gave a secret interview to a joint LAPD and federal task force investigating the 1997 killing of Christopher Wallace, the New York rapper known as The Notorious B.I.G. and Biggie Smalls, in Los Angeles.
Investigators had initially scrutinized Davis in the Wallace case because he attended the party at the Petersen Automotive Museum that Wallace was leaving when he was fatally shot in a drive-by attack. Authorities believed the gunman was in a Chevrolet Impala, and Davis was known to drive an Impala.
LAPD detectives Greg Kading and Daryn Dupree approached Davis at his Corona, California, home in 2008 while investigating drug trafficking allegations that could have exposed him to a lengthy prison sentence. Dupree testified on the third day of Davis’ trial, telling jurors that when the detectives asked whether Davis was involved in Wallace’s killing, he replied, “We did the other one.”
That remark led to the secret Dec. 18, 2008, proffer interview, commonly known as a “queen for a day” session, in which Davis received limited protections over statements he made to investigators. In the recording played for jurors, Davis said he was riding in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac involved in Shakur’s shooting and handed a loaded .40-caliber Glock to the men in the back seat. He said Anderson took the gun and opened fire before the group fled.
Prosecutors say the agreement did not grant Davis blanket immunity and that he later forfeited protections surrounding his statement by publicly repeating key details, including in a BET docuseries and his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. Sanft argued in his opening statement that Davis invented the story to gain leverage in the drug investigation and later repeated it for money. He also accused investigators of failing to corroborate Davis’ account.
“It’s because they knew he was full of crap,” Sanft told jurors.
On Thursday, Sanft questioned Long about his separate, recorded interview with Davis in 2009. Long testified that he did not know at the time about the earlier proffer agreement. After hearing Davis’ account and returning to Las Vegas, Long said he was eager to type up a warrant to “have Mr. Davis arrested for murder.”
Long testified that he was later told to “stand down,” apparently because of Davis’ proffer agreement. Sanft ostensibly sought the testimony to reinforce two defense themes: that authorities had effectively promised Davis protection for his statements, and that high-level prosecutors ultimately did not consider his account sufficiently credible to warrant further scrutiny.
Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon and has been jailed since his September 2023 arrest. In his opening statement on Aug. 17, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors the shooting amounted to an “act of revenge” amid simmering gang tensions between the South Side Compton Crips and the Mob Piru Bloods, with which Shakur and Knight had affiliation.
“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, referring to the 2008 proffer interview.
Before he left the witness stand Thursday, Det. Long answered a question from the jury. The question asked whether Long ever interviewed Knight about the shooting that killed Shakur. Long said he tried. He recalled asking a fellow cop who played football with Knight to set something up. “Suge hung up on him,” Long said.
In testimony on Aug. 25, Malcolm Greenidge, a close friend of Shakur’s who performed as E.D.I. Mean in the rapper’s group Outlawz, gave his account of the night of the shooting. He said he was riding in a Lexus “right behind” the BMW in a caravan headed to Knight’s nightclub. Greenidge recalled seeing silhouettes of several people inside a light-colored Cadillac that pulled up alongside the BMW, separate from the convoy. He recalled seeing an arm extending from a rear window just before the gunfire began. He could see the gun and the arm holding it, he said, but not the shooter’s face.
Greenidge testified that Knight made a U-turn and sped away after the shooting, and that he personally followed the BMW and rushed to Shakur’s side after it stopped. Police arrived moments later, he said, and an officer pointed a shotgun at him and ordered him to the ground. Greenidge said Shakur then warned him, in what would be among his final words: “Get on the ground, they’re going to shoot you.”
Justine Gatus, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department homicide detective, took the stand after Greenidge and walked jurors through items seized from Davis’ residence in 2023, including a stack of newspaper and magazine clippings related to the shooting and its aftermath.
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