Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, is on trial in Las Vegas for the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, 30 years after the shooting, facing a single count of murder with a deadly weapon in a Nevada court.
Prosecutors base their case on Davis’s 2019 memoir “Compton Street Legend” and earlier interviews in which he claimed to have sat in the passenger seat of the white Cadillac, handed a gun to the back seat and watched the drive‑by that struck Shakur. Defence counsel argues those statements are fictional and that the memoir lacks factual basis. The trial opened with opening statements on Monday, Aug 18 2026, after Davis was arrested in 2023.
The proceeding marks the first time any individual has been charged in the decades‑old Tupac murder, offering potential closure for the hip‑hop community, the victim’s estate and law‑enforcement agencies. It also tests the admissibility of self‑incriminating memoirs and the reliability of surviving eyewitnesses, setting a precedent for other cold‑case prosecutions that rely on long‑elapsed testimony.
The three accounts differ on emphasis: one notes Davis’s not‑guilty plea and the opening arguments, another highlights prosecutors’ reliance on an alleged confession in the memoir, while a third stresses the defence’s claim the memoir is fictional and points out that three alleged co‑shooters are dead, leaving Davis as the sole living participant besides Suge Knight.