Thursday’s hearing was scheduled to serve as an arraignment after the original hearing was postponed.
Los Angeles:
The man charged with murder in connection with the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur a quarter-century ago was back in U.S. court on Thursday.
Duane “Keefe D” Davis, 60, was indicted last month in the killing, despite not being the man who wielded the gun in Las Vegas in 1996.
Thursday’s hearing was scheduled to serve as an arraignment after the original hearing was postponed.
But attorney Ross Goodman asked for the case to be postponed, saying that while he was there to represent Davis, he had not been formally hired.
“I’ll give you two weeks, but in two weeks we have to get this case moving,” District Judge Tierra Jones told him.
At arraignment, Davis is expected to enter a plea to a charge of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote, further or aid a criminal gang.
Davis has long acknowledged his involvement in the murder, boasting that he was the “scene commander” in the attempt to kill Shakur and Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight in revenge for an attack on his cousin.
Under Nevada law, anyone who aids or abets a murder can be charged with the murder, just as a getaway driver can be charged with a bank robbery even if he never entered the bank.
Shakur, the best-selling hip-hop artist behind hits like “California Love,” “Changes” and “Dear Mama,” was a huge star in the rap world when he was gunned down on September 7, 1996. was only 25.
He was signed to Death Row Records, a band then associated with the Los Angeles street gang Mob Piru, which had long feuded with the South Side Compton Crips – a group in which Davis was a key figure.
Prosecutors said last month that what happened the night of the killing had been largely known for years, but they did not have enough admissible evidence to move the case forward.
That began to change when Davis, reportedly the only person in the car alive that night, published an autobiography and spoke about the crime on a TV program. Talked about the crime for a TV program.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
