Murder charge upheld against only suspect in 1996 Tupac Shakur killing

The only suspect ever to be charged in the 1990s killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas has lost a bid to have his murder case dismissed.

Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny said in a decision issued Tuesday that Duane Keffe D Davis had provided no proof of any immunity deals and that the state of Nevada has never offered him a deal.

Davis and his lawyer had argued that he never should have been charged with murder because of immunity agreements he says he reached years ago with federal and local authorities.

Attorney Carl Arnold said the indictment against his 61-year-old client is an egregious violation of his constitutional rights because of a 27-year delay in prosecution.

Arnold said after the hearing that they will decide in the coming days if they will appeal the judge's decision to the state Supreme Court.

Prosecutors said Davis has provided no proof that he was granted immunity by authorities who interviewed him in 1998 and in the early 2000s while he was still living in California.

Davis' trial in Las Vegas is currently scheduled for March 17. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

Prosecutors have said the evidence against Davis is strong, including his own accounts of the 1996 shooting in his tell-all memoir. Davis, an ex-gang leader, is accused of orchestrating the shooting near the Las Vegas Strip that killed Shakur shortly after a brawl at a casino involving Shakur and Davis' nephew, Orlando Baby Lane Anderson.

Davis is originally from Compton, California. He was arrested in September 2023 in his neighbourhood near Las Vegas.

In interviews and his 2019 memoir that described his life as a leader of a Crips gang sect in Compton, Davis said he obtained a .40-caliber handgun and handed it to Anderson in the back seat of a car from which, he and authorities said, shots were fired at Shakur in another car.

Shakur died a week later. He was 25.

Anderson, who died in 1998 in a shooting in Compton, had denied involvement in Shakur's killing. Two other men in the car with Anderson and Davis are also dead.