Tupac Shakur murder trial's first week sees heated testimony from reluctant witnesses with old gangland ties
The first week of Tupac Shakur’s long-awaited murder trial exposed the challenge prosecutors face nearly 30 years after his death — most of the key players are dead, others refuse to cooperate and their case rests heavily on the defendant's own words.
Duane "Keffe D" Davis, 63, is accused of providing the murder weapon used in a 1996 Las Vegas drive-by shooting that killed Shakur and wounded Death Row Records founder Marion "Suge" Knight. He is not accused of pulling the trigger. The trial began Monday and is expected to run four to five weeks.
Three other men believed to have been in the suspect vehicle with Davis are all dead, including Davis' nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, who was jumped earlier that night by Knight's entourage, according to prosecutors.
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The defense denies he was involved, and his attorney, Michael Sanft, has suggested that he fabricated the version of events now being used by the prosecution.
Former FBI Special Agent Wade Lee testified that Davis sat down with investigators in 1998 after a drug-trafficking bust and began cooperating with authorities.
Davis sat down for multiple interviews with investigators, then spoke out on a BET documentary and detailed the night of the slaying in his memoir, prosecutors said.
Davis is a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, which was a rival of the Mob Piru Bloods, a gang affiliated with Knight, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence for another Compton dispute that turned deadly.
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The two groups had a bloody rivalry, highlighted by a brawl in the summer of 1996 that preceded Anderson's beating at the MGM Grand casino on Sept. 7, 1996, shortly before Shakur was gunned down in what prosecutors allege was retaliation.
Knight, who is on the witness list, has said in prior interviews he does not intend to cooperate with prosecutors. James "Mob James" McDonald, a former Mob Piru associate, told the court to "treat me as a hostile witness" when he took the stand and later told Davis directly, "I don't want to send you to prison."
"At the time, again, the gang culture, they had that same culture as the La Cosa Nostra, which was, you know, ‘we don’t talk to the cops,’" said Chris Swecker, a former assistant director of the FBI.
He also has a background in gang investigations and helped implement the National Gang Intelligence Center.
"You would think a victim would say, ‘Hey, that’s who shot me.’ Not the case in that culture," Swecker added. "And so that’s partly why … nobody was charged originally with the crime."
Davis' own words are now central to the state's case against him.
"The need to brag and the need to get street cred sort of overrode caution," Swecker said. "And now he sits in that defendant’s chair."
Prosecutors opened Monday by describing Shakur's killing as revenge for the beating of Anderson, Davis' nephew, inside the MGM Grand after a Mike Tyson fight on Sept. 7, 1996. They argue Davis obtained a gun, helped hunt down Shakur and handed the weapon into the back seat before someone opened fire.
"Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself," Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft countered that Davis exaggerated and made up stories for attention and book sales.
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"What they are telling you, they're representing it to be a fact when it really is fiction," he told jurors in his own opening statement. "And it's up to you to determine what the facts are in this case."
He also said that police never tried corroborating Davis' claims when other suspected parties were still alive and attacked the investigation as incomplete.
Former LAPD Detective Daryn Dupree testified Wednesday that Davis once denied involvement in the murder of Christopher Wallace, better known as the rapper Notorious B.I.G., by saying, "we did the other one," which Dupree testified he understood as a reference to Shakur.
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Dupree also described Davis' claim that Sean "Diddy" Combs was supposed to provide money for Shakur's murder.
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Combs is currently in prison after being convicted of federal prostitution charges. He has not been charged in the deaths of Shakur or Wallace. He was a close associate of Wallace, who was killed in Los Angeles six months after Shakur, and whose Bad Boy Records was a rival of Knight's Death Row Records.
Then on Thursday, prosecutors played hours of Davis' 2008 police interview.
On the recording, Davis said he was inside the Cadillac, initially had the gun and passed it toward the back seat. He identified Anderson as the man who ultimately opened fire on Shakur and Knight.
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On Monday, jurors were shown surveillance video from MGM showing the initial fistfight involving Knight's entourage and Davis' nephew, Anderson.
Thomas Kern, a former Las Vegas crime scene analyst who now works for Customs and Border Protection, testified Tuesday that he was present at Shakur's autopsy. The forensic pathologist determined his death to be a homicide caused by multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and abodmen.
By Friday more than a dozen witnesses had testified, including photographer Leonard Jefferson, who took one of the last known photographs of Shakur alive.
Also on the witness list is Yusef Jah, a ghostwriter who worked with Davis on his book, "Compton Street Legend: Notorious Keffe D's Street-Level Accounts of Tupac and Biggie Murders, Death Row Origins, Suge Knight, Puffy Combs, and Crooked Cops."
Fox News' Melissa Chrise contributed to this report.