The man charged with murder for his alleged role in the 1996 shooting death of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur lost his bid to suppress key evidence that he argued was obtained through an unlawful nighttime search. A judge denied the request at a Tuesday hearing, a courtroom source confirms to Rolling Stone.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis and his lawyers, William Brown and Robert Draskovich, had argued in court filings that investigators presented a “misleading portrait” of Davis in their search warrant application presented to a magistrate judge. They said the affidavit unfairly depicted Davis as a potentially armed and dangerous narcotics dealer who might provoke a standoff with police, putting his neighbors at risk.
The defense lawyers argued in filings obtained by Rolling Stone that Davis was a retired grandfather and cancer survivor who “cooperated politely” when a detective knocked on his door during daylight hours before the July 2023 search and his subsequent arrest in September 2023. At the time, the defense lawyers said, Davis was living a quiet life with his wife in a Las Vegas suburb and simply asked to have a lawyer present before speaking with police.
The lawyers said police made “strategic omissions” when they later portrayed Davis as a “multiple-time convicted felon” with a gun arrest, without noting that his drug convictions were 25 years old and that his gun arrest, eight years earlier, did not result in a conviction. According to the lawyers, Davis left the drug trade in 2008 and had a decade of lawful employment afterward, working as an oil refinery inspector. The image presented to secure the warrant “bore little resemblance to reality,” the lawyers argued.
In their search warrant application, excerpted in court filings obtained by Rolling Stone, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Det. Clifford Mogg said officers sought to search Davis’s home at night because “the cover of darkness will allow officers to surround and secure the residence.” He added that if Davis or others inside tried to “barricade themselves,” darkness would enable officers to evacuate nearby homes “with the least exposure to residents.” (Davis and his lawyers claimed the safety rationale didn’t make sense because neighbors were more likely to be home at night.)
Davis, 62, has pleaded not guilty to a single murder count and is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center. Prosecutors allege he orchestrated Shakur’s drive-by killing and supplied the .40-caliber Glock that also wounded Suge Knight, co-founder of Death Row Records, who was driving along the Las Vegas Strip. Authorities say the attack was retaliation after Shakur got in a fight with Orlando Anderson hours earlier inside a casino on Sept. 6, 1996.
In a 2019 memoir, Davis detailed his rise in the South Side Crips and acknowledged signing a federal cooperation agreement tied to a drug case in Los Angeles. During a 2008 interview with law enforcement, he claimed Sean Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, offered $1 million to have Knight and Shakur killed amid a feud. (Combs has vehemently denied the allegation.) Davis said an associate named Eric “Zip” Martin supplied the gun that he passed into the back seat of a rented Cadillac, where Anderson allegedly used it to open fire. Davis said he was never paid any money.
While prosecutors allege Davis’ tell-all memoir and interviews represent key evidence in the case, the defense insists they were pure showmanship. His lawyers argued the statements were “entertainment” meant to generate profit. They compared the public’s cultural fixation on Tupac‘s death to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, arguing it was easy to see why someone might falsely place himself at the center for personal gain.
Anderson denied any role in the shooting before he was killed in 1998 at age 23 in Compton. Police have never recovered the alleged murder weapon. Davis previously failed in an attempt to have the charges dismissed. His trial, which has been postponed multiple times, is set for Aug. 10.
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