Will former gang leader arrested for murder of Tupac Shakur receive house arrest on $750,000 bail? Judge to decide

LAS VEGAS – A Nevada judge did not immediately rule Tuesday whether a former Los Angeles-area gang leader will be released from prison to house arrest ahead of his murder trial in the Las Vegas slaying of hip-hop music legend Tupac Shakur. , in 1996.

Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny said after hearing arguments she will issue a ruling later. She indicated that she was not convinced to grant the release of Duane “Keffe D” Davis.

“I don’t really see where the money is coming from,” she said, adding that the decision will be made after she finishes reviewing financial records.

The judge said Davis — a self-described former leader of a Crips gang sect in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, Calif. — could be released on $750,000 bail if he could demonstrate that the funds used to secure their release were legally obtained.

Davis, now 61, sought release shortly after his death. arrest last September made him the only person accused of a crime in a murder that for 27 years attracted intense interest and speculation.

Prosecutors allege that the shooting that killed Shakur resulted from competition between East Coast members of a Bloods sect of gangs and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for mastery in a musical genre known at the time as “gangsta rap”.

Davis’ defense attorney, Carl Arnold, declined by phone Monday to speak before the hearing before Kierny in Las Vegas.

Representatives at Crum & Forster Insurance and North River Insurance Co., a Morristown, New Jersey-based title lender named in the court filing, did not respond to phone messages from The Associated Press.

Davis told Kierny in court in February that supporters were “hesitant to come here and help me with bail because of the media and the circus that’s going on.”

Kierny’s decision in January The setting of the bail amount came after prosecutors and Davis’ defense attorneys exchanged claims about whether the word “green light” recorded by authorities monitoring an October prison phone conversation between Davis and his son was evidence of threats to witnesses in the case, or showed the danger faced by Davis members of the family.

Davis has declared himself innocent to first-degree murder. His trial is scheduled for November 4th. If he is convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Public defenders who represented Davis before he hired Arnold said in December that he was not acting appropriately medical care in prison after a fight with colon cancer that they said was in remission.

According to police, prosecutors and Davis’ own accounts, he is the only person still alive among four people who were in a white Cadillac from which shots were fired in September 1996, fatally wounding Shakur and running over the rap mogul. Marion “Suge” Knight at an intersection near the Las Vegas Strip. Knight, now 59, is serving 28 years in a California prison for using a vehicle to kill a man in the Los Angeles area in 2015.

Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, who was in the back seat of the Cadillac, denied involvement in Shakur’s death and died in a May 1998 shootout in Compton. The other backseat passenger, DeAndre “Big Dre” or “Freaky” Smith, died in 2004. The driver, Terrence “Bubble Up” Brown, died in a 2015 shooting in Compton.

Davis has publicly described himself as the orchestrator of the shooting, but not the shooter. A new effort by Las Vegas police to solve the case has led to a search warrant and a break-in last July at his Henderson home.

Prosecutors say they have strong evidence to convict Davis of murder based on his own accounts during multiple police and media interviews since 2008 — and on a 2019 memoir about his life leading a Compton street gang.

In his book, Davis wrote that he was promised immunity from telling Los Angeles authorities what he knew about the fatal shootings of Shakur and rival rapper Christopher Wallace six months later in Los Angeles. Wallace was known as The great notorious or Biggie Smalls.

Arnold claims Davis told stories so he could make moneyand that Nevada police and prosecutors lack key evidence, including the gun, the Cadillac and evidence that Davis was in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting.