Ex-gang leader charged in Tupac Shakur killing files motion to dismiss case over egregious violations
LAS VEGAS (AP) — An ex-gang leader is seeking to have all the charges against him dismissed in the 1990s killing of rap music icon Tupac Shakur.Attorney Carl Arnold filed the motion on Monday in the District Court of Nevada to dismiss charges against Duane Davis in the 1996 shooting of Shakur.The motion alleges “egregious” constitutional violations because of a 27-year delay in prosecution.
The motion also asserts a lack of corroborating evidence and failure to honor immunity agreements granted to Davis by federal and local authorities.“The prosecution has failed to justify a decades-long delay that has irreversibly prejudiced my client,” Arnold said in a news release.“Moreover, the failure to honor immunity agreements undermines the criminal justice system’s integrity and seriously questions this prosecution.”Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the filing.
He has said evidence against Davis is strong and it will be up to a jury to decide the credibility of Davis’ accounts of the shooting including those in a 2019 memoir.Davis is originally from Compton, California.He was arrested in the case in September 2023 near Las Vegas.
He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and has sought to be released since shortly after his arrest.Davis is accused of orchestrating and enabling the shooting that killed Shakur and wounded rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight after a brawl at a Las Vegas Strip casino involving Shakur and Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.Authorities have said that the gunfire stemmed from competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for dominance in a genre known at the time as “gangsta rap.”In interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir that described his life as a leader of a Crips gang sect in Compton, Davis said he obtained a .40-caliber handgun and handed it to Anders...