Jurors watched portions of a BET documentary Friday in which Duane “Keffe D” Davis recounted the 1996 shooting that killed rap legend Tupac Shakur, echoing an account he first gave police in a secret 2008 interview.
Prosecutors say Davis’ decision to participate in the documentary and later publish a memoir stripped away his protections surrounding the earlier interview, helping clear the way for his murder charge now being tried in Las Vegas.
“I’m coming out now to tell the story because I got cancer,” Davis said in a clip of the 2018 docuseries played in court. “I got nothing else to lose. All I care about now is the truth.”
Davis said on camera that he was riding in a white Cadillac with his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, and two other men when they saw Shakur in a black BMW interacting with fans “like he was in a parade.” He said his crew pulled a U-turn to catch up with the car driven by Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight.
“If he wouldn’t have been out the window, we would have never seen him,” Davis said in the clip that showed a recreation with an actor playing Shakur, standing up through the BMW’s sunroof. Asked who shot Shakur, Davis replied, “Going to keep it for the code of the streets. It just came from the backseat, bro.”
In his 2008 interview with police, played for jurors Thursday, Davis said he handed a loaded .40-caliber Glock to the backseat because he didn’t have a clear shot. He said Anderson grabbed the weapon and fired.
The video shown Friday, from the six-part BET docuseries Death Row Chronicles, could prove significant because it offered jurors a vivid retelling of the account Davis first gave LAPD and federal task force members during their Dec. 18, 2008, interview at his lawyer’s office in Los Angeles County. Davis now says he lied during that meeting to gain leverage while facing a potential life sentence on drug charges. He claims he repeated the fabricated story in his BET interview for entertainment purposes because he was paid.
During the 2008 interview, LAPD Det. Greg Kading told Davis, “Nothing you say can be used against you.” But the proffer session did not amount to blanket immunity. Under the so-called “queen for a day” agreement, prosecutors agreed not to use Davis’ statements from the meeting against him, though they could still pursue charges based on evidence obtained independently.
Prosecutors now say Davis voided the agreement by participating in the BET series and publishing his memoir, Compton Street Legend, where he repeated key elements of the account publicly. They successfully sought permission to play the 2008 interview for jurors, saying it was admissible as a way to corroborate Davis’s public statements.
Mario Diaz, who directed the docuseries, testified Friday that he handed at least one check to Davis for his participation. He estimated Davis’ payment was “anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000,” but he wasn’t sure. Under cross-examination by Davis’ defense lawyer, Diaz said it was also possible Davis was paid in a series of $5,000 installments. At this point, Davis was seen shaking his head in the courtroom.
After Diaz left the stand, prosecutors played a recorded 2009 interview Davis gave to a Las Vegas detective, with one of the LAPD detectives from the 2008 session also present. Davis again described riding in a car with three other men, including Anderson, when they spotted Knight and Shakur in the black BMW.
In the recording, Davis said Anderson was angry and believed his arm had been broken when Shakur and members of his entourage attacked him inside the MGM Grand earlier that night. The beating, prosecutors say, grew out of a gang dispute involving a Death Row Records chain and medallion allegedly stolen during an earlier confrontation at a mall between members of Davis and Anderson’s South Side Compton Crips and members of the Mob Piru Bloods affiliated with Knight. According to prosecutors, the Las Vegas shooting was “an act of revenge” in an ongoing cycle of retaliation.
Davis told the detectives that after the shooting, his group parked the Cadillac behind the Carriage House hotel and abandoned the gun on the tire on the vehicle’s front passenger side. He claimed Anderson then disappeared for about 20 minutes.
“He said he went to pee on his hands… to get the gunpowder [off],” Davis explained. He called the practice “street stuff.”
Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon and has been jailed since his arrest in September 2023. If convicted, he faces the possibility of life in prison without parole.
