Tupac Shakur Murder Trial Opens in Las Vegas With Gang Allegations

The long-delayed murder trial over the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur opened in a Las Vegas courtroom on Monday, with prosecutors painting Duane "Keffe D" Davis as the architect of a revenge shooting while his defense team dismissed the case as built on fiction.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis, 63, did not fire the fatal shots but allegedly planned the attack in retaliation for a beating his nephew suffered hours earlier. The confrontation involving Shakur's entourage and Davis's nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, occurred outside a boxing match at the MGM Grand on September 7, 1996.

Palal said Davis spent the next two hours plotting retribution, leading to Shakur being gunned down in a drive-by shooting. The prosecutor noted that Davis has been the most talkative figure in a case where few have come forward, referencing his admissions to the FBI in 1998 and 1999, and a 2009 interview with Las Vegas police where he acknowledged his role.

Davis, who has pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder with a deadly weapon for the benefit of a criminal gang, sat quietly in a blue suit as his attorney, Michael Sanft, delivered the defense's opening statement. Sanft argued that law enforcement previously declined to charge Davis because they knew his claims were unreliable, calling a detective's work "biased," "sloppy," and "incomplete."

Sanft asserted that the prosecution's narrative is "fiction" and that there are no facts to back up Davis's book, which investigators used as a basis for parts of their case. He also noted that most eyewitnesses have since died, leaving Davis as one of the few surviving accounts of the night.

Shakur, who died at age 25, remains a towering figure in hip-hop culture. He was nominated for six Grammy Awards and inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. If convicted, Davis faces life in prison.