By JESSICA HILL Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada judge ruled on Tuesday that the recording of an interview the man accused of killing Tupac Shakur gave to police in 2008 could be used at his upcoming trial.
Judge Carli Kierny found that the interview is admissible in Duane “Keffe D” Davis’ trial, which is scheduled to start Aug. 10.
Davis, 63, is charged with murder in Shakur’s 1996 killing and faces life in prison without parole if convicted.
Shakur’s death is considered one of the most notorious unsolved murders in the United States. The case went cold until Davis began making public statements about it, including in a book he co-wrote in which he said he was in the Cadillac and provided the weapon used to shoot Shakur.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued that a 2008 interview Davis gave law enforcement was supposed to be confidential, and that detectives explicitly told him the interview was not supposed to be used against him.
Prosecutors argued there was no basis to exclude the interview from the trial, which is expected to take about four weeks.
The interview was used in former Los Angeles Police Department Detective Greg Kading’s book “Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations.” Portions of the recording were also played in documentaries, including the recent documentary “Sean Combs: The Reckoning.”
Shakur was killed Sept. 7, 1996, in Las Vegas. He and Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight were sitting at a red light when a white Cadillac pulled up beside them near the Las Vegas Strip, and gunfire erupted. Shakur was shot multiple times and died six days later. Knight survived with minor injuries.
Three others were with Davis in the Cadillac, including his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, but Davis is the only person still alive. None of the others faced charges in Shakur’s killing before they died.
In his memoir, Davis said he obtained a handgun from an associate and tossed it into the back seat of the Cadillac but did not say who fired the fatal shots.
In the 2008 interview, Davis describes how he and his crew saw Shakur that night and pulled up beside them, and said that Anderson “popped them.” Anderson denied involvement in Shakur’s killing at the time, and died two years later in an unrelated gang shooting in Compton, California.