LAS VEGAS — A former gang leader is pushing for the dismissal of all charges linked to the 1990s murder of rap icon Tupac Shakur.
On Monday, attorney Carl Arnold submitted a motion to the District Court of Nevada, aiming to clear Duane Davis in relation to the 1996 shooting incident involving Shakur.
The motion claims significant constitutional breaches due to a 27-year lag in prosecution, highlighting the absence of corroborative evidence and alleging that federal and local authorities failed to uphold immunity agreements previously given to Davis.
“The prosecution has not provided a sufficient rationale for the decades-long delay, which has caused irreparable harm to my client,” Arnold stated in a press release. He added, “Additionally, the disregard for immunity agreements raises serious concerns about the integrity of the criminal justice system and calls into question the validity of this prosecution.”
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has yet to respond to inquiries regarding the motion. However, he has previously asserted that the evidence against Davis is substantial, indicating that it will ultimately be for a jury to assess the reliability of Davis’ statements about the shooting, including those featured in a memoir he published in 2019.
Davis, who hails from Compton, California, was taken into custody in September 2023 in the Las Vegas area. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and has pursued options for release almost immediately following his arrest.
He faces accusations of coordinating and facilitating the shooting that claimed Shakur’s life and injured Marion “Suge” Knight, a prominent figure in the rap industry, after a scuffle at a casino on the Las Vegas Strip. This altercation involved Shakur and Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.
Law enforcement officials have indicated that the gunfire resulted from rivalries between East Coast members of a Bloods gang faction and West Coast affiliates of a Crips sect, which includes Davis, all vying for control in the burgeoning genre known as “gangsta rap” during that era.
In various interviews as well as his 2019 memoir, which details his life as a Crips leader in Compton, Davis claimed that he procured a .40-caliber handgun and provided it to Anderson while seated in the back of a car. This vehicle is believed to have been used to fire at Shakur and Knight, who were in a separate car at a nearby intersection. Notably, Davis did not name Anderson as the individual who pulled the trigger.
Shakur succumbed to his injuries a week later at a hospital, at the age of 25, while Knight survived and is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence related to a homicide that occurred in Compton in 2015.
Anderson refuted any involvement in Shakur’s murder and met his own demise in a shooting incident in Compton in 1998 at the age of 23. Meanwhile, the other two men present in the vehicle at the time of the incident are also deceased.
A detective from the Las Vegas police testified before a grand jury, stating that law enforcement has yet to locate the firearm used during the shooting at Shakur and Knight, nor have they tracked down the vehicle from which the shots were allegedly fired.
