LAS VEGAS – The legal team defending the man accused of the 1996 murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur is seeking to invalidate evidence, arguing it was seized during an “unlawful nighttime search.”
Attorneys Robert Draskovich and William Brown, representing Duane “Keffe D” Davis, submitted a motion this week. Davis faces charges related to the drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur near the Las Vegas Strip.
They claim that a judge was misled into believing Davis was a menacing drug dealer, which justified a nighttime search warrant—something typically reserved for urgent situations where evidence might be destroyed if delayed until daylight.
Contrary to this portrayal, Davis, a former gang leader from Southern California, has been out of the drug trade since 2008. His lawyers say he had transitioned to working in oil refinery inspections. At 60, Davis was a retired cancer survivor living with his wife in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, and surrounded by his adult children and grandchildren when the warrant was served.
“The court wasn’t told any of this,” the attorneys stated in their motion. “The court authorized a nighttime search based on a depiction of Davis that was far from accurate — essentially a factual error.”
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, responsible for the search, confiscated Davis’ electronic devices, “alleged marijuana,” and numerous photographs. They have refrained from commenting on the situation, citing ongoing legal proceedings. The police had previously justified the nighttime operation as a means to secure the area, suggesting that darkness would facilitate a safer evacuation of nearby homes if Davis resisted.
Davis was arrested in September 2023. He pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and sought to be released since shortly after his arrest.
His attorneys claim Davis’ arrest stems from false public statements Davis had made in which he claimed to be present in the white Cadillac from which Shakur was shot. They say he has never offered details that would firmly corroborate his presence in the car, and that he benefited from saying he was present. He dodged drug charges by telling the story in a proffer agreement, and he has made money by repeating it in documentaries and his 2019 book, according to his attorneys.
He sought to dismiss his murder charges in the Nevada Supreme Court, but in November his petition was denied.
“Think of it this way: Shakur’s murder was essentially the entertainment world’s JFK assassination — endlessly dissected, mythologized, monetized — so it’s not hard to see why someone in Davis’s position might falsely place himself at the center of it all for personal gain,” his attorneys wrote.
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