Los Angeles, US, Jan 9 (EFE). – A judge in Clark County (Nevada, US) on Tuesday set bail at $750,000 and house arrest for Duane Keith Davis, “Keffe D”, accused of being one of the intellectual authors of the shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996.
Keffe D, 60, will be electronically monitored in the months leading up to his trial, which is scheduled for June.
His defense claimed he is still recovering from cancer and is not a flight risk.
In addition, Davis’ attorneys accused prosecutors of misrepresenting a recording of an October phone call from prison to his relatives, in which he gave a list of names and used the phrase “green light,” which prosecutors interpreted as a threat.
“In (Davis’) world, a ‘green light’ is an authorization to kill,” argued a prosecution brief released after the recording.
“Duane’s son said he heard there was a green light on Duane’s family,” wrote Davis’ lawyers, using his first name. “Duane obviously did not know what his son was talking about,” the defense responded.
“If Duane is so dangerous and the evidence is so overwhelming,” they wrote, “why did [police and prosecutors] wait 15 years to arrest Duane for the murder of Tupac Shakur?” the defense added.
The attorneys also asked the court to reduce the bail amount to $100,000, but the request was not granted.
Davis, the former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, pleaded not guilty in Clark’s court in November after being arrested in late September for his alleged involvement in the murder of hip-hop star Tupac Shakur.
“Keefe D” had confirmed years ago in his memoirs that he was a enger in the white Cadillac that did a drive-by on Shakur on September 7, 1996, who died six days later in a Las Vegas hospital after being shot.
Before this case was reopened, the defendant was already serving a 28-year sentence for the death of a Compton (Los Angeles) businessman in 2015.
The prosecution’s version is limited to the memories and interviews the defendant gave during that time, in which he claimed to have obtained a .40 caliber pistol, which he gave to Orlando Anderson, another member of the organization, who was in the back seat and who he claimed was the shooter.
Anderson, then 22, denied involvement in Shakur’s 1996 murder, but died two years later in another Compton shooting. The other engers have also died in the nearly three decades since the crime.
Despite his death at 25, Tupac is still considered one of the most influential rappers of all time.
He was nominated for six Grammy Awards, was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, and last year received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. EFE
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