Jurors in the murder trial of Duane "Keffe D" Davis heard a recorded 2008 police interview last week in which Davis said hip-hop mogul Sean Combs had offered him $1 million to kill Tupac Shakur and Marion "Suge" Knight, according to CNN and other outlets covering the Las Vegas proceedings. The claim, made by Davis under a proffer agreement shielding him from prosecution on unrelated drug charges, has not been independently corroborated in court, and Combs has not been charged in connection with Shakur's 1996 killing.
Davis, 63, is charged with a single count of murder with a deadly weapon in the September 1996 drive-by shooting that killed Shakur on the Las Vegas Strip; he has pleaded not guilty. In the recording, played for jurors last Thursday, Davis described the shooting to LAPD detective Greg Kading, who had told him, "Nothing you say today will be used against you." Davis said he handed a gun to Deandre Smith in the back seat as their car pulled alongside Shakur's vehicle, and separately identified another nephew, the late Orlando Anderson, as the person who fired the fatal shots, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
An Allegation, Not a Charge
Prosecutors have argued that Davis's public retellings of the shooting — in a 2019 memoir and subsequent interviews — undercut the confidentiality of his original proffer deal, persuading the judge overseeing the case, Carli Kierny, to allow the recordings to be played in court. Davis's memoir account reportedly differs from his taped statement to police on some details, including who was armed and where the gun was positioned inside the car.
A spokesperson for Combs disputed the allegation in a statement to CNN, characterizing Davis's account as unreliable.
Davis has denied his own claims, maintaining that he made the statements to gain fame and notoriety and that they were not true.
Statement from representatives of Sean Combs, via CNN
Combs has never been named a suspect in Shakur's death. He is currently serving a 50-month federal sentence at FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey after being convicted last year on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, in a separate case that did not include the racketeering and sex-trafficking charges on which he was acquitted. His attorneys have appealed both the conviction and the sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, arguing his sentencing judge improperly weighed conduct tied to counts he was not convicted of; that appeal remains pending.
Jury selection in the Davis trial began August 10 at the Clark County Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas, with opening statements on August 17. Additional recordings and testimony continued through the trial's first week, and it is expected to run for up to five weeks. Prosecutors have indicated they plan to introduce further recorded interviews from 2009 in the coming days.
