Tupac Shakur Shooting Suspect Seeks to Postpone Murder Trial, Citing New Witness Testimony

The man charged in the 1996 shooting death of Tupac Shakur is seeking to delay the March 2025 start of his murder trial, citing the need for new witness interviews.

Lawyers for Duane “Keffe D” Davis filed the motion to postpone the trial Friday, saying that new witness testimony from a private investigator could prove that Davis was not in Las Vegas at the time of the Shakur killing in September 1996, despite the suspect implicating himself in his memoir Compton Street Legend, Las Vegas KSNV reported.

“This case involves decades-old allegations, and with every new piece of evidence, it becomes increasingly clear that critical facts have yet to be fully examined,” Davis’ lawyer Carl Arnold said.

The motion also claimed that new evidence has emerged that could point to someone else orchestrating Shakur’s killing, and that too needs to be investigated prior to the scheduled March 2025 trial date.

A hearing has been set for this coming Tuesday, Feb. 18 to determine if the trial will be postponed.

Davis faces a first-degree murder charge for his role in Shakur’s shooting death; he previously pleaded not guilty and has been held without bail since his arrest in September 2023. 

According to his indictment, Davis orchestrated Shakur’s murder and provided the .40-caliber Glock that also wounded Knight, who was driving Shakur down the famed Vegas strip. Authorities claim the murder was retaliation after Shakur got into a physical altercation with Orlando Anderson inside a casino after a Mike Tyson fight on Sept. 6, 1996, hours before the deadly shooting.

At a press conference at Las Vegas Metro Police headquarters hours after Davis’ arrest, homicide Lt. Jason Johansson said, “It wasn’t until 2018 that this case was reinvigorated as additional information came to light related to this homicide, specifically Duane Davis’ own admissions to his involvement in this homicide investigation that he provided to numerous media outlets.” 

In the nearly 30 years since the murder, Las Vegas homicide detectives had amassed information describing Davis as the leader of the criminal conspiracy, but, Johansson said, “we never had the necessary evidence to bring this case forward.” Much of that evidence emerged via Davis’ own tell-all memoir, which described the circumstances around the Shakur killing in detail.