Courts and Crime
Duane Davis' lawyer questioned why prosecutors never subpoenaed Suge Knight to testify
Prosecutors argued Monday that their murder case against Duane “Keffe D” Davis rested on far more than his own words about Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing. His defense lawyer countered that Davis had lied for years to police, TV producers, and podcasters, and that without those stories, there was not enough evidence to convict him.
“This was a case about gang retaliation and revenge,” Clark County Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors Monday during his closing argument at Davis’ murder trial in Las Vegas. “This case is drenched with circumstantial evidence even beyond Mr. Davis’ statements.”
Palal started with a “little experiment,” highlighting only the evidence presented during the two-week trial that did not rely on the secret police interview Davis gave to Los Angeles police in 2008 in which he described himself as the mastermind behind the shooting of Shakur on Sept. 7, 1996. (Davis gave the account under a proffer agreement while seeking leniency in an unrelated drug case.) The interview was intended to remain confidential, but the recorded interview was admitted at trial after Davis repeated the details in a BET docuseries, other media interviews, and his memoir, Compton Street Legend.
