Defense attorney says 'preconceived notions' drove Tupac murder conviction
Michael Sanft, the defense attorney for Duane “Keffe D” Davis, said Tuesday that the jury’s quick guilty verdict in the Tupac Shakur murder case was driven by “preconceived notions” rather than the evidence. “I’m surprised. With the amount of evidence that should have been considered by the jury, I don’t believe that they went through it,” Sanft told CBS News, referring to the panel’s deliberation of less than three hours. “My feeling is that they had preconceived notions, and those notions were what led to the conviction for Duane Davis.” Nevada law does not require jurors to deliberate for a set amount of time before reaching a verdict.
Asked whether he had the same concerns about the jury’s impartiality before the trial started, Sanft said there were “bigger issues” at the time, mostly involving pre-trial motions about what evidence would be allowed. By opening statements, he said, the defense already sensed it was in a deep hole. “It’s like a football game where it was 52 to 0 walking in at the opening kickoff,” he said.
Prosecutors argued that Davis procured the gun used to shoot Shakur and orchestrated the Sept. 6, 1996, Las Vegas drive-by in retaliation for the beating of Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, earlier that night. Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal said Davis was “hunting” for Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, who was also wounded but survived. In closing arguments, Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo described the case as “a slam-dunk, absolutely no defense to murder case.”
Prosecutors did not allege that Davis was the shooter, but Nevada law allows a murder conviction if a person helps someone else commit the crime. Jurors heard audio from a 2008 police interview in which Davis said Anderson fired the shots after Davis passed the gun to the backseat of the car they were in. Anderson was never charged in Shakur’s death and died in an unrelated shooting about 20 months later. Davis is now the only person allegedly involved in the shooting who is still alive.
Davis pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors said he had initially been offered protection from prosecution in exchange for cooperating with authorities, but that the deal was invalidated by the 2019 release of his book “Compton Street Legend” and a series of public interviews. In the book, Davis placed himself inside the Cadillac used in the shooting and described getting the Glock .40 from a drug dealer named Eric “Zip” Martin. He later claimed he had never read the book and had only been given a co-author credit.
Sanft called Judge Carli Kierny’s decision to allow evidence of Davis’ “other bad acts,” including his gang leadership and drug trafficking past, “inappropriate.” He also objected to her instruction that if jurors believed Davis’ self-incriminating statements, they would not need to find corroborating evidence. That left the defense in the awkward position of having to challenge Davis’ own credibility, Sanft said, calling it “the only defense strategy when you have an individual that’s being convicted just on his words alone, without any facts to support the words that he said.”
Sanft insisted there was no proof Davis was even in Las Vegas the day Shakur was shot. “There is no actual evidence that supported the conviction,” he said. “There was a feeling that it was the right thing to do, but not with real evidence.” Davis’ sentencing is set for Oct. 13. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, and Sanft said he plans to appeal in a process that could take more than a year.
The conviction is the first time anyone has been held criminally responsible for Shakur’s death, closing a cold-case chapter that has haunted hip-hop for nearly 30 years. Yet the case also underscores the difficult legal questions that arise when a conviction rests heavily on a defendant’s own statements, especially after decades of conflicting accounts.