LAS VEGAS (AP) – A former gang leader is seeking the dismissal of all charges he faced in the 1990s murder of rap music icon Tupac Shakur.
Attorney Karl Arnold filed a motion Monday in Nevada District Court to dismiss charges against Duane Davis in the 1996 Shakur shooting. The motion alleges “egregious” constitutional violations by delaying prosecution for 27 years. The motion also alleges a lack of supporting evidence and failure to comply with immunity agreements granted to Davis by federal and local authorities.
“The prosecution could not justify decades of delay that irreparably prejudiced my client,” Arnold said in a news release. “Furthermore, failure to comply with the immunity agreement undermines the integrity of the criminal justice system, and there are serious questions about this prosecution.”
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the filing. He said the evidence against Davis was strong and it was up to the jury to determine the reliability of Davis' testimony about the shooting, including that written in his 2019 memoir.
Davis is from Compton, California. He was arrested in September 2023 for an incident near Las Vegas. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and asked for his release shortly after his arrest.
Davis killed Shakur after a brawl at a Las Vegas Strip casino involving Shakur and Davis' nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, and rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight. He is accused of orchestrating and carrying out the shooting that injured the man.
Authorities said the shooting stemmed from competition between members of the East Coast Bloods gang and the West Coast Crips group, which included Davis, for supremacy in the genre then known as “gangsta rap.” Announced.
In interviews and a revealing 2019 memoir about his life as leader of Compton's Crips gang, Davis said he obtained a .40-caliber handgun and handed it to Anderson in the back seat of his car. Ta. Authorities said he fired shots at Shakur and Knight, who were in separate cars, at an intersection near the Las Vegas Strip. Davis did not identify Anderson as the culprit.
Shakur died a week later at a nearby hospital. Mr. Knight was 25 years old. Knight survived and is serving a 28-year prison sentence for the 2015 murder of a Compton man.
Anderson denied any involvement in Shakur's death, and died at the age of 23 in a shooting incident in Compton in 1998. Two other men in the car also died.
A Las Vegas police detective testified before the grand jury that police did not have the guns used to shoot Shakur and Knight, nor did they find the vehicle in which the shots were fired.
