The man charged with murder for his alleged role in the 1996 shooting death of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur has lost his bid to suppress key evidence.
Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis argued it was obtained through an unlawful nighttime search, but a judge denied the request at a Tuesday hearing, Rolling Stone reports.
His defence lawyers argued in filings obtained by the outlet that Davis was a retired grandfather and cancer survivor who “cooperated politely” when a detective knocked on his door during daylight hours before the July 2023 search.
The lawyers said police made “strategic omissions” when they portrayed Davis as a “multiple-time convicted felon” with a gun arrest in their search warrant application.
According to the lawyers, Davis left the drug trade in 2008 and had a decade of lawful employment afterwards, working as an oil refinery inspector.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to a single murder count and is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Centre in Las Vegas.
Prosecutors allege he orchestrated Shakur’s drive-by killing and supplied the gun that also wounded Suge Knight, co-founder of Death Row Records, who was driving along the Vegas Strip.
Authorities say the attack was retaliation after Shakur got in a fight with Orlando Anderson hours earlier inside a casino on 6 September, 1996.
During a 2008 interview with law enforcement, Davis claimed Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, offered $1 million (£740,000) to have Knight and Shakur killed amid a feud.
Combs has vehemently denied the allegation.
