Las Vegas —
Under a canopy shielding them from the desert sun that pushes temperatures to nearly 110 degrees, Las Vegas tourists rode zip lines down Fremont Street. In a courtroom three blocks away, attorney Michael Sanft was performing his own high-wire act.
The defense attorney for Duane Davis, representing the only person ever charged in Tupac Shakur’s murder, told jurors his client’s frequent comments about his involvement in the fatal shooting on September 7, 1996 – starting with a secret interview with the LAPD back in 1998, and continuing with public statements, podcasts and a book – were a nearly two-decades-long work of fiction.
“BULLSH*T,” Sanft summed it up in all-capital letters on a slide in his opening statement Monday, August 17.
Before court went into session that day, a long line of people was winding through the lobby of the downtown Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas, waiting to pay traffic tickets. One of the only signs of the trial that has drawn international attention was on a set of 14 video screens that lay out all of the cases to be heard in the building each day.
