A former Los Angeles-area gang leader charged with killing hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur in 1996 in Las Vegas asking to be allowed out of prison on house arrest has been accused of ‘greenlighting’ the assassinations of witnesses ahead of his trial in June.

Court-appointed lawyers for Duane ‘Keefe D’ Davis say their 60-year-old client is in poor health, poses no danger to the community and won’t flee to avoid trial. They want the judge to set his bail at no more than $100,000.

Keefe, currently being held in Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge and has remained jailed without bail since his arrest on September 29 outside his home in suburban Henderson, where Las Vegas police had served a search warrant in mid-July.

He is the only person ever charged with a crime in the shooting that also wounded rap music mogul Marion ‘Suge’ Knight, following several apparent confessions to certain involvement in a memoir and several media interviews.

Prosecutors alleged in a court filing submitted last week that jail telephone recordings and a list of names sent to Keefe D’s family show that witnesses set to testify at his trial are in danger if he is allowed to leave prison.

The filing said that his son told him during a recorded phone call on October 9 that a ‘green light’ order was given.

‘In [Keefe’s] world, a ‘green light’ is an authorization to kill,’ prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal said in the court filing.

He added that the federal government was worried enough that it ‘stepped in and provided resources to at least (one witness) so he could change his residence.’

Prosecutors added that this was evidence enough of ‘credible threats to witnesses [that] demonstrate both a consciousness of guilt and that defendant poses a danger to the community.’

There is no reference in the court filing to Keefe, from Compton in California, instructing anyone to harm someone, or to anyone associated with the case being physically harmed.

One of his defense attorneys, Robert Arroyo, said he did not see evidence that any witness had been named or threatened.

They also called attention to Keefe’s own words since 2008 – in police interviews, in his 2019 tell-all memoir and in the media – which provides strong evidence that he orchestrated the September 1996 drive-by shooting.

But his lawyers said that these were sensationalized for ‘for entertainment purposes and to make money.’

Despite this claim, prosecutors told Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny that, by his own descriptions, Davis was ‘the shot-caller’ in the fatal shooting and he should remain jailed.

Keefe is the only person still alive who was in the vehicle from which shots were fired, a white four-door Cadillac.

He asserts he was given immunity in a 2008 agreement with the FBI and Los Angeles police who were investigating both the killings of Shakur in Las Vegas and rival rapper Biggie Smalls in March 1997 in Los Angeles.

The shooting saw the shooter hit Tupac and Suge Knight five times between them with bullets fired from a 0.40 Smith & Wesson and Winchester Glock 22 at 11:15pm on September 7, 1996.

Tupac was hit twice in the chest, once in the arm and once in the thigh, while Knight’s head was hit by fragmentation in the black BMW sedan they rode in that night.

If convicted of the shooting, Keefe could spend the rest of his life in a Nevada state prison.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.