2024-01-10 11:23:34
A judge on Tuesday set bail at $750,000 for a former Los Angeles-area gang leader accused of orchestrating the 1996 murder of hip hop legend Tupac Shakur and said he can serve house arrest with electronic monitoring before his trial in June.
Court-appointed attorneys for Duane “Keffe D” Davis told The Associated Press following the hearing in Las Vegas that they believe he can post bail. They had requested a bail of no more than 100 thousand dollars.
A day before his court appearance, the lawyers argued that their client was in danger, but not the witnesses, as prosecutors had said. And they noted that the 60-year-old is in poor health following battling cancer, from which he is in remission, and that he will not flee to avoid trial.
“We believe he can post bail,” public defender Robert Arroyo said following Tuesday’s hearing. Attorneys accused prosecutors of misinterpreting a jailhouse phone recording and a list of names provided to Davis’ relatives, and of wrongly informing the judge that Davis poses a threat to the public if he were released.
Who is Duane “Keffe D” Davis?
Prosecutors point to Davis’s own words from 2008, in police interviews, in a 2019 memoir and in the media, which they say provide strong evidence that he orchestrated the September 1996 shooting.
Davis’ lawyers argue that his descriptions of Shakur’s murder were “done for entertainment purposes and to make money.”
Davis, originally from Compton, California, is the only person still alive who was in the car from which Shakur was shot in a shooting that also wounded rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight. Knight is now serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area dating back to 2015.
Davis’ attorneys noted Monday that Knight is an eyewitness to Shakur’s shooting but did not testify to the grand jury that indicted Davis before his Sept. 29 arrest outside his Henderson home. Las Vegas police went to the home with a search warrant in mid-July.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to murder and has been held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where detainees’ phone calls are routinely recorded. If he is found guilty at trial, he might spend the rest of his life in prison.
Davis maintains that an FBI and Los Angeles police task force granted him immunity from possible prosecution in 2008 when they were investigating the Las Vegas murders of Shakur and rival rapper Christopher Wallace, known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls. six months later in Los Angeles.
DiGiacomo and Palal say any immunity agreement was limited. Last week, they presented the court with an audio recording of a Dec. 18, 2008, task force interview during which they said Davis “was specifically told that what he stated in the room would not be used once morest him.” , but (that) if he talked to other people, that might put him in danger.”
Davis’ attorneys responded Monday with a reference to the publication 12 years ago of a book written by former Los Angeles Police Detective Greg Kading, who attended those interviews.
“Duane is not concerned,” the attorneys said, “because his alleged involvement in Shakur’s death has been public since… 2011.”
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