Las Vegas. Prosecutors are working on the case against Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who is accused of killing singer Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in 1996. They assured a Nevada judge that witnesses in the case may be in danger.
A court order filed Thursday asks the judge to keep Davis behind bars until trial. He claimed that members of Davis' family were given a witness list and that Davis' son told the defendant during a recorded jailhouse phone call that he had been given the “green light.”
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“In (Davis') world, a 'green light' is a license to kill.”prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal said in the court filing.
“This caused such concern that the federal government intervened and provided resources for at least (one witness) to change residence,” prosecutors wrote, calling the Oct. 9 jail call evidence of “credible threats.” both a sense of guilt and the fact that the defendant represents a danger to the community.”
The court document contains no indication that Davis ordered anyone to harm anyone or that anyone connected to the case suffered physical harm. DiGiacomo and Palal were not available for comment Friday.
One of Davis' court-appointed attorneys, Robert Arroyo, said he and attorney Charles Cano are reviewing prosecutors' allegations and plan to respond in court on Tuesday. A hearing is scheduled on Davis' request to post $100,000 bail and remain under house arrest until his trial in June.
“However, in our initial review of the phone call in question, we do not see when (the witnesses) were mentioned,” Arroyo said, “let alone threatened.”
Arroyo and Cano argue in a bail motion filed Dec. 19 that Davis, 60, does not pose a threat to the community, would not flee to avoid trial and would not receive adequate medical care in prison after he was diagnosed with colon cancer. is in remission.
Davis is originally from Compton, California. He was arrested Sept. 29 outside a home in suburban Henderson, where Las Vegas police served a search warrant on July 17. He pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in November and is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where detainees' phone conversations are routinely recorded. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
In Thursday's court filing, DiGiacomo and Palal told Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny that, by their own admission, Davis was “the shooter” in the fatal shooting and must remain in prison.
Prosecutors are citing what they describe as multiple “confessions” since 2008 – in police interviews, in Davis' 2019 memoir and in the media – that he committed the shooting at a traffic light near the Las Vegas Strip in September 1996 staged a shooting that killed Shakur and injured rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Knight, now 58, is serving 28 years in a California prison for the 2015 death of a Compton businessman.
Davis is the only person still alive who was in the vehicle from which the shots were fired. He claims he was granted immunity in 2008 as part of a deal with the FBI and Los Angeles police, who were investigating both the Shakur killings in Las Vegas and the March 1997 killings of rival rapper Christopher Wallace in Los Angeles. Wallace was known as The Notorious BIG or Biggie Smalls.
Davis' lawyers argue that his confessions were made “for entertainment purposes and to make money.”