A former Compton gang leader accused of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur can be released on $750,000 bail and placed under house arrest with electronic monitoring pending a trial in June, a Compton County judge decided Tuesday. Clark, Nevada.
Court-appointed attorneys for Duane “Keffe D” Davis had requested his release on personal recognizance or reasonable bond, citing that the 60-year-old former gang leader was in poor health after battling cancer. , which is currently in remission.
After the hearing, a member of Davis’ legal team told reporters, “We believe he can” post bail.
Davis, an admitted “caller” for the Compton Southside Crips, was arrested in late September in connection with Shakur’s murder. The arrest came two months after Las Vegas police served a search warrant at his home in Henderson, Nevada. He pleaded not guilty to a murder charge and has since been jailed without bail.
Prosecutors had tried to keep Davis behind bars, arguing he was a threat to witnesses in the case.
In an October recording of a phone call from Davis from the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, prosecutors say Davis’ son spoke to the defendant about a “green light” clearance.
“In (Davis’) world, a ‘green light’ is an authorization to kill,” prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal told Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny in the court document.
The court record made no reference to Davis ordering anyone to hurt anyone or causing anyone to suffer physical harm, but prosecutors say at least one witness received assistance from federal authorities “so he could change his residence.”
Davis’ legal team told the judge that their client never threatened anyone. “Duane’s son was saying that he heard there was a green light for Duane’s family,” Davis’ attorneys wrote in requesting bail.
Prosecutors say Davis, who was indicted by a grand jury for murder with a firearm, did not pull the trigger but provided the gun and encouraged the killing as revenge for a beating his nephew Orlando Anderson had received at the hands of Shakur. Death Row Records head Marion “Suge” Knight and other Mob Piru Bloods affiliates at the MGM Grand Hotel.
Knight was driving Shakur in a BMW near the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them and a gunman opened fire, according to police and court records. Knight and Davis are the only living witnesses to the murder.
Authorities have said some of the most compelling evidence against Davis comes from the suspect himself.
Davis identified Anderson as the shooter in 2008 when he finally spoke to authorities under the protection of an offer from the Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI, meaning his statements could not be used against him. In that interview, then-LAPD Det. Greg Kading asked if Anderson, also known as Baby Lane, had pulled the trigger.
Shakur “leaned over and Orlando rolled down the window and opened it,” Davis responded. “If they had driven by me, I would have busted them. But they were on the other side.”
When Kading and Daryl Dupree of the Los Angeles Police Department interviewed Davis in December 2008, they were seeking to solve the 1997 murder of rapper Christopher Wallace, or “The Notorious BIG,” also known as Biggie Smalls. The information offered could not be used to indict Davis, but his statements since then were part of the evidence presented to the grand jury this year.
