A Nevada judge ruled Tuesday that a 2008 police interview of Duane “Keffe D” Davis can be used at his upcoming Tupac Shakur murder trial. Judge Carli Kierny found the recording admissible as Davis, 63, heads toward a trial set to begin Aug. 10.
The ruling matters because the interview sits at the center of the state's case against Davis, who is charged with murder in Shakur’s 1996 killing and faces life in prison without parole if convicted. Prosecutors say the recording can come in at trial, and chief deputy DA Mark DiGiacomo said there was zero legal basis to keep it out.
Shakur was killed on Sept. 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, six days after being shot multiple times. Marion “Suge” Knight survived the shooting with minor injuries, and the case remained unsolved for years before Davis began speaking publicly about it, including in a book he co-wrote.
What prosecutors are expected to use from the recording is the part where Davis says he and his crew saw Shakur that night and pulled up beside them, then says Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson “popped them.” The interview was later used in Greg Kading’s book, Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations, and parts of it also appeared in documentaries, including Sean Combs: The Reckoning.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued his client did not know the interview was being recorded. The fight now is not over whether Davis spoke, but over whether the recording can be played to jurors in a murder case where every word may matter. Davis has said in his memoir that he got a handgun from an associate and tossed it into the back seat of the Cadillac, but he did not say who fired the fatal shots.
That leaves the trial with a sharper focus than before. If the recording is played as expected, jurors will hear Davis’ own account of the night, and the state will try to turn that account into proof when the four-week trial opens Aug. 10.
