Tupac Shakur Murder Trial Opens With Heated Testimony From Reluctant Witnesses With Gang Ties

The opening week of the long-awaited murder trial in Tupac Shakur’s killing underscored the uphill battle facing prosecutors nearly three decades later: many central figures are dead, others are unwilling to cooperate, and much of the case depends on statements made by the defendant himself.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, is charged with supplying the gun used in the 1996 Las Vegas drive-by shooting that fatally wounded Shakur and injured Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight. Prosecutors do not allege that Davis fired the shots. The trial opened Monday and is expected to last four to five weeks.

The three other men prosecutors believe were in the suspect vehicle with Davis have all died. They include Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, who authorities say was attacked by Knight’s entourage earlier that night.

Davis’ defense team denies he played any role in the killing. His attorney, Michael Sanft, has argued that Davis may have invented the account prosecutors are now relying on.

Former FBI Special Agent Wade Lee told jurors that Davis began cooperating with investigators in 1998 after he was arrested in a drug-trafficking case.

Prosecutors said Davis went on to sit for several interviews with investigators, later discussed the case in a BET documentary and described the night of the shooting in his memoir.

Davis is a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, which was a rival of the Mob Piru Bloods, a gang affiliated with Knight, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence for another Compton dispute that turned deadly.

The two groups had a bloody rivalry, highlighted by a brawl in the summer of 1996 that preceded Anderson’s beating at the MGM Grand casino on Sept. 7, 1996, shortly before Shakur was gunned down in what prosecutors allege was retaliation.

Knight, who is on the witness list, has said in prior interviews he does not intend to cooperate with prosecutors. James “Mob James” McDonald, a former Mob Piru associate, told the court to “treat me as a hostile witness” when he took the stand and later told Davis directly, “I don’t want to send you to prison.”

“At the time, again, the gang culture, they had that same culture as the La Cosa Nostra, which was, you know, ‘we don’t talk to the cops,’” said Chris Swecker, a former assistant director of the FBI.

He also has a background in gang investigations and helped implement the National Gang Intelligence Center.

“You would think a victim would say, ‘Hey, that’s who shot me.’ Not the case in that culture,” Swecker added. “And so that’s partly why … nobody was charged originally with the crime.”

Davis’ own words are now central to the state’s case against him.

“The need to brag and the need to get street cred sort of overrode caution,” Swecker said. “And now he sits in that defendant’s chair.”

Prosecutors opened Monday by describing Shakur’s killing as revenge for the beating of Anderson, Davis’ nephew, inside the MGM Grand after a Mike Tyson fight on Sept. 7, 1996. They argue Davis obtained a gun, helped hunt down Shakur and handed the weapon into the back seat before someone opened fire.

“Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors.

Defense attorney Michael Sanft countered that Davis exaggerated and made up stories for attention and book sales.

“What they are telling you, they’re representing it to be a fact when it really is fiction,” he told jurors in his own opening statement. “And it’s up to you to determine what the facts are in this case.”

He also said that police never tried corroborating Davis’ claims when other suspected parties were still alive and attacked the investigation as incomplete.

Former LAPD Detective Daryn Dupree testified Wednesday that Davis once denied involvement in the murder of Christopher Wallace, better known as the rapper Notorious B.I.G., by saying, “we did the other one,” which Dupree testified he understood as a reference to Shakur.

Dupree also described Davis’ claim that Sean “Diddy” Combs was supposed to provide money for Shakur’s murder.

Combs is currently in prison after being convicted of federal prostitution charges. He has not been charged in the deaths of Shakur or Wallace. He was a close associate of Wallace, who was killed in Los Angeles six months after Shakur, and whose Bad Boy Records was a rival of Knight’s Death Row Records.

WATCH: Retired LAPD detective Moses Castillo says Tupac Shakur murder trial may hinge on Keffe D’s ghostwriter

Then on Thursday, prosecutors played hours of Davis’ 2008 police interview.

On the recording, Davis said he was inside the Cadillac, initially had the gun and passed it toward the back seat. He identified Anderson as the man who ultimately opened fire on Shakur and Knight.

On Monday, jurors were shown surveillance video from MGM showing the initial fistfight involving Knight’s entourage and Davis’ nephew, Anderson.

Thomas Kern, a former Las Vegas crime scene analyst who now works for Customs and Border Protection, testified Tuesday that he was present at Shakur’s autopsy. The forensic pathologist determined his death to be a homicide caused by multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and abodmen.

By Friday more than a dozen witnesses had testified, including photographer Leonard Jefferson, who took one of the last known photographs of Shakur alive.

Also on the witness list is Yusef Jah, a ghostwriter who worked with Davis on his book, “Compton Street Legend: Notorious Keffe D’s Street-Level Accounts of Tupac and Biggie Murders, Death Row Origins, Suge Knight, Puffy Combs, and Crooked Cops.”