Will ex-gang leader held in Tupac Shakur killing get house arrest with $750K bail? Judge to decide
LAS VEGAS– A Nevada judge is being asked to decide Tuesday whether a former Los Angeles-area gang leader will be released from prison and placed on house arrest ahead of his 1996 murder trial in the Las Vegas slaying of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, now 61, has been trying to get released soon after him arrest last September made him the only person ever charged with a murder that has generated intense interest and speculation for 27 years.
Prosecutors allege that the gunfire that killed Shakur stemmed from competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect and West Coast groups of a Crips cult, including Davis. dominance in a musical genre known at the time as ‘gangsta rap’.
Davis’ attorney, Carl Arnold, declined to speak by phone Monday ahead of a hearing before Judge Carli Kierny of the Clark County District Court in Las Vegas.
The judge has said Davis – a former leader of a Crips gang sect in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, California – could be released on $750,000 bond if he can prove the funds used to secure his release have been obtained legally.
Representatives at Crum & Forster Insurance and North River Insurance Co., the Morristown, New Jersey-based backer of the bond named in the lawsuit, did not respond to telephone messages from The Associated Press.
Davis Kierny told the court in February that lenders “were hesitant to come here and help me with the bail because of the media and the circus that is going on.”
Kierny’s decision in January The decision to set bond came after prosecutors and Davis’ attorneys raised allegations about whether the word “green light” recorded by authorities in an October jail phone call between Davis and his son were watching, was evidence of threats against the police. to give evidence in the case, or showed danger with which Davis’ family members.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder. His trial is scheduled for November 4. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Public defenders who represented Davis before he hired Arnold said in December that he was incorrect medical care in prison after a battle with colon cancer that they said was in remission.
According to police, prosecutors and Davis’ own accounts, he is the only person left alive among the four people who were in a white Cadillac from which shots were fired in September 1996, killing Shakur and grazing rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight were injured during an intersection near the Las Vegas Strip. Knight, now 59, is serving 28 years in a California prison for using a vehicle to kill a Los Angeles man in 2015.
Davis’ cousin, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, who was in the back seat of the Cadillac, denied involvement in Shakur’s death and died in a shooting in May 1998 in Compton. The other backseat passenger, DeAndre “Big Dre” or “Freaky” Smith, died in 2004. The driver, Terrence “Bubble Up” Brown, died in a 2015 shooting in Compton.
Davis has publicly described himself as the orchestrator of the shooting, but not the shooter. A renewed push by Las Vegas police to solve the case led to a search warrant and raided his home in Henderson last July.
Prosecutors say yes strong evidence to convict Davis of murder based on his own stories during multiple police and media interviews since 2008 — and in a 2019 memoir about his life as a Compton street gang leader.
In his book, Davis wrote that he was promised immunity to tell 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 B.I.G or Biggie Smalls.
Arnold claims that Davis told stories so he could make moneyand that police and prosecutors in Nevada are missing key evidence, including the gun, the Cadillac and evidence that Davis was in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting.