jury<\/a>\u00a0of six men and 10 women \u2014 four are alternates \u2014 will decide whether Davis, 63, is guilty of one count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has\u00a0pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could get life in prison.<\/p>\nHere’s a closer look at the first week of the trial that is expected to last about a month.<\/p>\n
Is Keffe D admitting old truths or as his lawyer says, \u2018full of crap\u2019?<\/p>\n
A prosecutor said in his opening statement that Davis’ own words \u2014 in interviews with police, podcasters and filmmakers \u2014 would prove he orchestrated the killing.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,\u201d Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors. \u201cRemarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, 30 years later, we\u2019re going to ask you to finally hold Duane Davis accountable,\u201d Palal said.<\/p>\n
Davis’ defense attorney Michael Sanft took the unusual approach of telling jurors his client’s words were all bloviating and braggadocio, and did not represent the truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they are telling you, they are representing as fact, when it\u2019s really fiction,\u201d said Sanft. He said Davis wasn\u2019t previously charged because law enforcement knew that he was \u201cfull of crap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who are the witnesses and what have they said about the 1996 shooting?<\/p>\n
Seventeen witnesses testified through the first five days, a little under half the number prosecutors said they plan to call at the trial.<\/p>\n
They included a police officer, Garry Dale, who first responded to the scene, jumped into the ambulance with Shakur and asked him who shot him. \u201cWe’ll take care of it,\u201d was Dale’s best memory of what Shakur said.<\/p>\n
Brent Becker, a homicide detective from the initial investigation, said that despite being able to get probable identification on the men in the Cadillac from confidential informants, it was of little use because no witnesses would say anything solid on the record.<\/p>\n
That included Knight. \u201cI thought he lied to us,\u201d Becker said.<\/p>\n
Some of the case’s most compelling witnesses \u2014 formerly gang-affiliated men who testified unwillingly under court order \u2014 essentially refused to help the prosecution that summoned them, but provided drama and humor that was absent from the more sterile official testimony.<\/p>\n
They included James McDonald, a former Mob Piru member who helped Knight with security.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m aware of a lot of things,\u201d McDonald said on the stand, \u201cthings that was going on, people ain\u2019t talked about them in 30 years. Today ain\u2019t one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He directly addressed the defendant. \u201cWhat you\u2019re going through, brother, is what you\u2019re going through,\u201d McDonald said, adding \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knight is on the prosecution’s witness list, but will likely take a similar approach should he be called. He’s in prison serving a 28-year sentence for an unrelated killing in California.<\/p>\n
Leonard Jefferson, who took the last known photo of Shakur, also took the stand. Police developed Jefferson\u2019s film and returned the photo negatives days after Shakur died.<\/p>\n
In the frame, Shakur looks directly at the camera while Knight stares ahead, his hand on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe picture just took on a life of its own,\u201d Jefferson told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Jurors hear Keffe D’s damning statements<\/p>\n
Decades of interviews starting from the late 1990s were played for jurors.<\/p>\n
Key was a 2008 interview with law enforcement looking into the 1997 killing of the Notorious B.I.G., Shakur\u2019s rap archrival. Davis had briefly been a suspect in that shooting, but one detective testified that \u201ceveryone was a suspect\u201d in that case at one point or another.<\/p>\n
Davis shifted the conversation to the Shakur shooting, and admitted his involvement from the passenger side of the Cadillac.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we would have been on my side, I would have blasted,\u201d Davis said. Instead, Knight\u2019s car was on the other side, so Davis passed his gun back to the guys in the backseat, he said.<\/p>\n
Davis said his nephew took the weapon and started firing.<\/p>\n
Several people in the audience shook their heads when they heard detectives tell Davis that the interview would not be used against him. But authorities argue he negated that agreement when, years later, he spoke publicly about the shooting.<\/p>\n
Davis, with bald head and gray goatee, sat stoically through most of the testimony, wearing a suit and tie. He occasionally whispered and exchanged fist bumps with his lawyer.<\/p>\n
And he spoke to the judge on Friday, saying his family’s safety is at risk because witnesses for the prosecution have shared his home address. \u201cThey keep giving out my address,\u201d he said. \u201cThey broke into my house, vandalized my house, vandalized my wife\u2019s car.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not upset I\u2019m being prosecuted,\u201d Davis said, but \u201cyou\u2019re endangering my family\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first week of testimony at the trial of a man accused of orchestrating the killing of\u00a0Tupac…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3990,146,85,46,268560],"class_list":["post-593714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-celebrity-news","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music-musicians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}