The man charged with the 1996 shooting death of Tupac Shakur appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court to dismiss the murder charges against him. He filed the appeal on Tuesday after a lower court judge upheld the charges in January.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis is charged with first-degree murder for his alleged role in Shakur’s shooting death. He has pleaded not guilty and has been held without bail since his arrest in September 2023. In an interview in March, he told ABC News, “I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody, never did ever kill nobody.” Though Davis has denied the charges against him, he also appeared to implicate himself in his memoir, Compton Street Legend, where he described the circumstances and his role in Shakur’s killing in detail.
His attorney Carl Arnold claimed Davis’ constitutional rights were violated. “Mr. Davis cooperated with law enforcement over the course of more than a decade, relying on repeated assurances that his statements would not be used against him — yet those very statements now form the core of the State’s case,” Arnold said in a statement via ABC News. (Arnold did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
In his first motion to dismiss filing in January, Arnold alleged Davis’ rights were violated due to the prosecution delay of 27 years, and that Davis was granted immunity agreements. The district court judge denied the appeal, citing that he had not provided proof for the immunity deals and that the time it took for prosecution was unintentional.
As ABC News reports, Davis was interviewed multiple times, in 1998 and 1999 and again in 2008 and 2009 by federal prosecutors, allegedly under an agreement that his statements would not be used against him for prosecution, per the filing. In 1998 and 1999, he denied knowledge of individuals involved in Shakur’s killing. In 2008 and 2009, Davis then noted his “alleged involvement in the murder and identified the alleged shooter,” per the appeal. Arnold said that because prosecutors did not present evidence connecting Davis to Shakur’s killing outside of his own statements, it was not enough for a trial.
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Prosecutors have claimed that Davis orchestrated Shakur’s murder and provided the gun used in the shooting. Authorities have alleged that the murder was retaliation for a physical altercation between Shakur and Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson, after a Mike Tyson fight that occurred hours before Shakur was shot.
Davis’ trial was pushed to 2026 after his attorneys filed a motion, citing the need for new witnesses and more investigation, which was granted. His trial is now set to begin in February 2026.
