Lawyers for a former gang leader charged with orchestrating the killing of Tupac Shakur have said their client – rather than witnesses in the care – is facing danger and should be released from jail to house arrest ahead of his trial.
Ahead of a bail hearing on Tuesday, Duane “Keffe D” Davis’s court-appointed lawyers accused prosecutors of misinterpreting a jail telephone recording and a list of names provided to his family members, and misreporting to the judge that Davis poses a threat to the public if he is released.
The former Los Angeles-area gang leader “never threatened anyone during the phone calls”, deputy special public defenders Robert Arroyo and Charles Cano said in a seven-page court filing. “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 Court Judge Carli Kierny.
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 the hip-hop star’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 which 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 has pleaded not guilty and has remained jailed without bail at Clark County Detention Centre in Las Vegas, where detainees’ phone calls are routinely recorded. If convicted at trial in June, 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 will not flee to avoid trial. They are asking for bail set at not more than 100,000 dollars (£78,000).
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.
