LAS VEGAS (AP) — Attorneys for a former Los Angeles-area gang leader charged with orchestrating the 1996 killing of hip-hop music legend Tupac Shakur say prosecutors are wrong — that their client is in danger and not witnesses – and he should be released from prison and placed under house arrest before his trial in June.
In a statement of claim filed Monday ahead of Tuesday's bail hearing, court-appointed attorneys for Duane “Keffe D” Davis accuse prosecutors of misinterpreting a jail phone recording and a list of names provided to Davis' family members falsely reporting to the judge that Davis posed a danger to the public if released.
Davis “never threatened anyone during the telephone conversations,” special assistant public defenders Robert Arroyo and Charles Cano said in their seven-page filing. “Furthermore, (the prosecution's) interpretation of the use of 'green light' is completely wrong.”
The reference to “green light” comes from a recording of an October jail call that prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal provided to Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny last month.
The prosecution's filing did not indicate that Davis directed anyone to harm anyone or that anyone connected to the case was physically injured. But prosecutors added: “In (Davis') world, a 'green light' is a license to kill.”
“Duane's son said he heard there was a green light for Duane's family,” Davis' lawyers wrote, using his first name. “Duane obviously didn’t know what his son was talking about.”
Arroyo and Cano declined to comment on their filing Monday.
Davis' lawyers also used Davis' first name Monday and urged Kierny to consider what they called the “obvious question.”
“If Duane is so dangerous and the evidence is so overwhelming,” they wrote, “then why did (police and prosecutors) wait 15 years to arrest Duane for the murder of Tupac Shakur?”
Prosecutors point to Davis' own words since 2008 — in police interviews, in his 2019 memoir and in the media — that they say provide strong evidence that he staged the September 1996 shooting.
Davis' lawyers argue that his descriptions of Shakur's murder were “for entertainment purposes and to make money.”
Davis, originally from Compton, California, is the only living person who was in the car from which shots were fired in the drive-by shooting that also injured rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight. Knight is currently serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area in 2015.
Davis' lawyers noted Monday that Knight was an eyewitness to the Shakur shooting, but did not testify before the grand jury that indicted Davis before his Sept. 29 arrest outside his Henderson home. Las Vegas police issued a search warrant for the home in mid-July.
Davis pleaded not guilty and remained held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where detainees' telephone conversations are routinely recorded. If convicted at trial, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Arroyo and Cano have argued that their 60-year-old client is in poor health after a battle with cancer, is in remission, and will not flee to avoid trial. They are asking Kierny for bail of no more than $100,000.
Davis claims he was granted immunity from prosecution in 2008 by an FBI and Los Angeles Police Department task force that investigated the Las Vegas murders of Shakur and rival rapper Christopher Wallace, known as The Notorious BIG or Biggie Smalls, six months ago later examined in Los Angeles.
DiGiacomo and Palal say any immunity agreement is limited. Last week, they provided the court with an audio recording of a task force interview dated December 18, 2008, in which they said that Davis “was specifically told that what he said in the room would not be used against him, but (That) if he talked to other people, that could put him in danger.”
Davis' lawyers responded Monday by pointing to the publication 12 years ago of a book written by former Los Angeles police detective Greg Kading, who was present at those interviews.
“Duane is not concerned,” the lawyers said, “because his alleged involvement in Shakur’s death has been made public since … 2011.”