Attorneys for a former Los Angeles-area gang leader charged with orchestrating the killing of hip-hop music legend Tupac Shakur in 1996 say prosecutors are wrong \u2013 that their client is facing danger, not witnesses \u2013 and he should be released from jail to house arrest ahead of his trial in June. In a Monday court filing ahead of a bail hearing Tuesday, Duane \u201cKeffe D\u201d Davis\u2019 court-appointed attorneys accuse prosecutors of misinterpreting a jail telephone recording and a list of names provided to Davis\u2019 family members, and misreporting to the judge that Davis poses a threat to the public if he is released.<\/p>\n
Davis \u201cnever threatened anyone during the phone calls,\u201d deputy special public defenders Robert Arroyo and Charles Cano said in their seven-page filing. \u201cFurthermore, (prosecutors\u2019) interpretation of the use of green light\u2019 is flat-out wrong.\u201d The \u201cgreen light\u201d reference is from a recording of an October jail call that prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal provided last month to Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny. \u201cDuane\u2019s son was saying he heard there was a greenlight on Duane\u2019s family,\u201d the attorneys wrote, using Davis\u2019 first name.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuane obviously did not know what his son was talking about.\u201d Arroyo and Cano declined Monday to comment about the filing. The court filing did not refer to Davis instructing anyone to harm someone, or to anyone associated with the case being physically harmed. But the prosecutors added that, \u201cIn (Davis\u2019) world, a green light\u2019 is an authorization to kill.\u201d Davis\u2019 lawyers on Monday also used Davis\u2019 first name asking Kierny to consider what they called \u201cthe obvious question.\u201d \u201cIf Duane is so dangerous, and the evidence so overwhelming,\u201d they wrote, \u201cwhy did (police and prosecutors) wait 15 years to arrest Duane for the murder of Tupac Shakur?\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors point to Davis\u2019 own words since 2008 \u2013 in police interviews, in a 2019 tell-all memoir and in the media \u2013 that they say provides strong evidence that he orchestrated the September 1996 shooting. Davis\u2019 attorneys argue that his descriptions of Shakur\u2019s killing were \u201cdone for entertainment purposes and to make money.\u201d Davis, originally from Compton, California, is the only person still alive who was in the car from which shots were fired in the drive-by shooting that also wounded rap music mogul Marion \u201cSuge\u201d Knight.<\/p>\n
Knight is now serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area in 2015. Davis\u2019 attorneys noted Monday that Knight is an eyewitness to the Shakur shooting but did not testify before the grand jury that indicted Davis ahead of his arrest arrest Sept. 29 outside his Henderson home. Las Vegas police had served a search warrant at the house in mid-July. Davis has pleaded not guilty and has remained jailed without bail at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where detainees\u2019 phone calls are routinely recorded. If convicted at trial, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.<\/p>\n
Arroyo and Cano have argued their 60-year-old client is in poor health after a battle with cancer that is in remission and won\u2019t flee to avoid trial. They\u2019re asking Kierny to set bail at not more than $100,000. Davis maintains he was given immunity from prosecution in 2008 by an FBI and Los Angeles police task force investigating the killings of Shakur in Las Vegas 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.<\/p>\n
Last week, they submitted to the court an audio recording of a Dec. 18, 2008, task force interview during which they said Davis \u201cwas specifically told that what he said in the room would not be used against him, but (that) if he were talk to other people, that could put him in jeopardy.\u201d Davis\u2019 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. \u201cDuane is not worried,\u201d the attorneys said, \u201cbecause his alleged involvement in the death of Shakur has been out in the public since \u2026 2011.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attorneys for a former Los Angeles-area gang leader charged with orchestrating the killing of hip-hop music legend Tupac Shakur in\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":24298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[7629,7628,7627,7632,3156,7631,7630,7633,7634,7513,1599],"class_list":["post-24295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-news","tag-duane-keffe-d-davis","tag-gang-leader","tag-killing-of-hip-hop-music-legend-tupac-shakur","tag-las-vegas-police","tag-los-angeles","tag-misinterpreting-records","tag-prosecutors","tag-rap-music-mogul-marion-suge-knight","tag-release-from-prison","tag-trial","tag-tupac-shakur"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}