The suspect accused of orchestrating the 1996 drive-by slaying of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur has been denied bail by a judge in Las Vegas who cited a Nevada “slayer statute” law that prohibits convicted killers from profiting from their crime.
Clark County judge Carli Kierny denied Duane “Keefe D” Davis’s request for release to house arrest before the November trial, saying he had failed to prove his bond was obtained through legal sources.
Davis, 60, a former Los Angeles-area gang leader with the Compton-based South Side Crips, has been held without bail since his arrest nine months ago. Davis has pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder with a deadly weapon in a gang-related homicide.
Earlier this year, a judge ruled that Davis could await trial under house arrest with electronic monitoring if he posts $750,000 bail. But that deal was revoked after Kierny probed the source of the funds.
The bond money had been submitted by Cash Jones, a music record executive who also goes by the name of Wack100. At the hearing, Jones said he paid 15% of the bail amount, or $112,500, as a “gift” from his business accounts but claimed he had no contract or financial agreement with Davis.
Prosecutors said that Davis “is getting the benefits from retelling his story in the killing of Mr Shakur. As a result, Mr Jones, in order to benefit from that, is paying the bail bond company … It’s clear that a fraud is being perpetrated on this court. One way or another … it is an illegal benefit, profiting from this crime.”
Prosecutors produced an interview Jones did with YouTube channel VladTV in which he said he would raise the bond if Davis agreed to do a series about his life.
“It’s only $75,000,” Jones said in the interview. “I’ve been thinking about going to get him with the stipulations that I’ll do the series on it.” Jones said the deal described wasn’t accurate and he made the claim up.
Prosecutors also played a jailhouse phone call between Jones and Davis during which Jones said: “You got to remember, this shit can set you up for the rest of your life. I will get you out and then we’ll sit down and talk about all that”.
The ruling denying Davis bail also noted wire transfers to Davis’s accounts since his arrest that did not show where they had come from.
Davis was charged in Shakur’s murder after a grand jury reviewed evidence obtained during a raid on Davis’s home that included computers, a cellphone, a hard drive, a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, photographs and a copy of Davis’s memoir in which he hinted at his role in Shakur’s killing.
A conviction in Shakur’s murder 27 years ago would reduce the number of outstanding mysteries around high-profile rap-related killings. In February, two men were convicted in the 2002 murder of Jason Mizell, also known as Jam Master Jay, a member of the hip-hop group Run-DMC.
But the murder of Biggie Smalls, better known as the Notorious BIG, has never been charged. For years, Smalls’s killing in Los Angeles in 1997 was rumored to be an act of revenge for Shakur’s murder a year earlier – and a bloody finale to the 90s east coast versus west coast rap wars.
The music business figures at the center of that rivalry, Marion “Suge” Knight, an LA gang banger and Death Row records founder who was sitting in the car when Shakur was fatally shot, and Bad Boy Records’ Sean “Diddy” Combs, have since gone on to lesser things.
Knight is serving 28 years in a California prison for running down and killing a Compton businessman and Combs is facing several civil claims of rape and sexual assault. Last month, a surveillance video from 2016 appeared to show Combs beating his then girlfriend Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel hallway.
Combs later said his behavior on the video was “inexcusable”.
