A former gang leader charged with orchestrating the killing of hip-hop star Tupac Shakur can be released from jail to serve house arrest with electronic monitoring ahead of his trial in June, a judge has decided.
Bail was set at 750,000 dollars (£590,000) for Duane “Keffe D” Davis at a hearing before a judge in Las Vegas.
His court-appointed lawyers had asked for bail of not more than 100,000 dollars (£78,000). They told the Associated Press after the hearing that they believe he can post bail.
His lawyers had argued in a court filing on Monday that their client — and not witnesses, as prosecutors had said — faced danger.
The lawyers accuse prosecutors of misinterpreting a jail telephone recording and a list of names provided to Davis’s family members, and of misreporting to the judge that Davis would pose a threat to the public if he were released.
Davis “never threatened anyone during the phone calls”, deputy special public defenders Robert Arroyo and Charles Cano said in their seven-page filing on Monday. “Furthermore, (prosecutors’) interpretation of the use of ‘green light’ is flat-out wrong.”
The “green light” reference is from a recording of an October jail call that prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal provided last month to Clark County District Judge Carli Kierny, who presided over the bail hearing.
The prosecution filing made no reference to Davis instructing anyone to harm someone, or to anyone associated with the case being physically harmed, but the prosecutors added: “In (Davis’s) world, a ‘green light’ is an authorisation to kill.”
Davis’s lawyers wrote: “Duane’s son was saying he heard there was a green light on Duane’s family. Duane obviously did not know what his son was talking about.
“If Duane is so dangerous, and the evidence so overwhelming, why did (police and prosecutors) wait 15 years to arrest Duane for the murder of Tupac Shakur?”
Prosecutors point to Davis’s own words since 2008 — in police interviews, in a 2019 tell-all memoir and in the media — which they say provide strong evidence that he orchestrated the September 1996 shooting.
Davis’s lawyers argue that his descriptions of Shakur’s killing were “done for entertainment purposes and to make money”.
Davis, originally from Compton, California, is the only person still alive who was in the car from which shots were fired in the drive-by shooting that also wounded rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight. Knight is serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area in 2015.
Davis’s lawyers noted on Monday that Knight was an eyewitness to the Shakur shooting but did not give evidence to the grand jury that indicted Davis before his arrest on September 29 outside his home. Las Vegas police had served a search warrant at the house in mid-July.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to murder and has been jailed without bail at Clark County Detention Centre in Las Vegas, where detainees’ phone calls are routinely recorded. If convicted at trial, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Mr Arroyo and Mr Cano have argued their 60-year-old client is in poor health after suffering cancer which is in remission, and he will not flee to avoid trial.
Davis maintains he was given immunity from prosecution in 2008 by an FBI and Los Angeles police taskforce investigating the killings of Shakur in Las Vegas and rival rapper Christopher Wallace – known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls – six months later in Los Angeles.
Mr DiGiacomo and Mr Palal say any immunity agreement was limited. Last week, they submitted to the court an audio recording of a December 18 2008, taskforce interview during which they said Davis “was specifically told that what he said in the room would not be used against him, but (that) if he were talk to other people, that could put him in jeopardy”.
Davis’s lawyers responded on Monday with a reference to the publication 12 years ago of a book written by former Los Angeles police detective Greg Kading, who attended those interviews.
“Duane is not worried,” the lawyers said, “because his alleged involvement in the death of Shakur has been out in the public since… 2011.”
