A judge on Tuesday set bail at $750,000 for a former Los Angeles gang leader accused of orchestrating the 1996 killing of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur and said he may serve house arrest with electronic monitoring before trial of June.
Court-appointed attorneys for Duane “Keffe D” Davis said The Associated Press after the hearing in Las Vegas that they believe he can post bail. They had requested bail of no more than $100,000.
Attorneys argued in a court filing a day earlier that their client — not witnesses, prosecutors said — was in danger. And they say their 60-year-old client is in poor health after battling cancer, which is in remission, and won't leave to avoid trial.
'We think he can' post bail, public defender Robert Arroyo he said after Tuesday's hearing.
Attorneys accused prosecutors of misrepresenting a jailhouse phone recording and a list of names given to Davis' family members and of misrepresenting to the judge that Davis poses a threat to the public if released.
Davis “never threatened anyone during the phone calls,” Arroyo said and Charles Cano, deputy special public defenders, in their seven-page filing Monday. “Additionally, (prosecutors') interpretation of the use of the 'green light' is completely flawed.”
The “green light” reference is from a recording of an October prison call that prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal surrendered last month to the Clark County District Judge Carly Kierney, who presided over the bail hearing.
The prosecution's filing made no mention of Davis ordering anyone to harm anyone or anyone associated with the case to be physically harmed. But prosecutors added that “In (Davis') world, a 'green light' is an authorization to kill.”
“Duane's son said he heard there was a green light in Duane's family,” Davis' attorneys wrote, using his first name. “Duane obviously didn't know what his son was talking about.”
Davis' attorneys also used his first name Monday, asking Kearney to address what they called “the obvious question.”
“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 Tupac Shakur's murder?”
Prosecutors point to Davis' own words from 2008 — in police interviews, a 2019 memoir and in the media — that they say provide strong evidence that he orchestrated the September 1996 shooting.
Davis' lawyers argue that his descriptions of Shakur's murder “were done for entertainment purposes and to make money.”
Davis, a native of Compton, Calif., is the only survivor in the car that was fired from in the shooting that also injured a rap mogul. Marion “Shug” Knight. Knight is now serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area in 2015.
Davis' attorneys noted Monday that Knight is an eyewitness to the Shakur shooting, but did not testify before the grand jury that indicted Davis before his Sept. 29 arrest outside his Henderson home. Las Vegas police had served a search warrant at the home in mid-July.
Davis pleaded not guilty to murder and was jailed without bond at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where inmates' phone calls are routinely recorded. If convicted at trial, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Davis maintains he was granted immunity from prosecution in 2008 by an FBI and Los Angeles police task force investigating the Las Vegas murders of Shakur and rival rapper Christopher Wallace, known as The Notorious BIG or Biggie Smalls, six months later in Los Angeles.
DiGiacomo and Palal say any immunity deal was limited. Last week, they submitted to the court an audio recording of a Dec. 18, 2008, task force interview in which Davis was told “it was specifically told that what he said in the room would not be used against him, but (that) if he talked to other people, something that could put him in danger.”
Davis' attorneys responded Monday by citing the publication 12 years ago of a book written by former Los Angeles police detective Greg Canting, who attended those interviews.
“Duane is not concerned,” the lawyers said, “because his alleged involvement in Shakur's death has been public since … 2011.”
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