Ex-gang leader’s account of Tupac Shakur killing is fiction, Vegas attorney says – Sun Sentinel

By KEN RITTER (Associated Press)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The attorney for a former Los Angeles gang leader accused of killing hip-hop music icon Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in 1996 said Tuesday that his client’s accounts of the killing are fiction and that prosecutors have not provided key evidence have to obtain. a conviction for murder.

“He himself tells different stories,” attorney Carl Arnold told reporters outside a courtroom after a brief status check with his client, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, in front of a Nevada judge. His trial is scheduled for November 4.

“We haven’t seen anything more than just his word,” Arnold said of Davis’ police and media interviews since 2008, in which prosecutors say he accused himself of Shakur’s murder — including Davis’ tell-all 2019 memoir about the life that he ran as a street gang in Compton, California.

Prosecutor Binu Palal did not immediately comment outside court on Arnold’s statements. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has said the evidence against Davis is strong and it will be up to a jury to judge the credibility of Davis’ stories.

Arnold said his client wanted to make money off his story, so he embellished or outright lied about his involvement in the car-to-car shooting that killed Shakur and injured rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight at a traffic light in the near the Las Vegas Strip in September 1996.

Knight, now 59, is serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area in 2015. He was not called by prosecutors to testify before the grand jury that indicted Davis last year.

Arnold said Davis will not testify at the trial, but he plans to call Knight to testify. The attorney said police and prosecutors have no evidence Davis was in Las Vegas at the time of Shakur’s killing, and they do not have the gun and car used in the shooting as evidence.

“We’ve seen videos of everyone else here. Where is the video of him?” Arnold said about Davis. “There’s just nothing to say he was here.”

Davis has been jailed on $750,000 bail since his arrest in September. Arnold said Tuesday that Davis has failed to raise the 10% needed to obtain bond to be released for home confinement.

Davis, 60, is originally from Compton. Police, prosecutors and Davis say he is the only living person who was in the car from which the shooting occurred.

Davis pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in November. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

In his book, Davis wrote that he was promised immunity from prosecution when he told Los Angeles authorities what he knew about the fatal shootings of Shakur and rival rapper Christopher Wallace in Los Angeles six months later. Wallace was known as The Notorious BIG or Biggie Smalls.

Shakur had five No. 1 albums, was nominated for six Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. Last year he was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.