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Davis Faces Jury as Trial Over Tupac Shakur Killing Begins

Prosecutors will rely on Davis’s past police statements, media interviews and his 2019 memoir to argue he organized the 1996 drive-by.

Overview

  • Jury selection is set to begin Monday and the trial is expected to run about a month, with prosecutors presenting Davis’s own prior accounts as their central evidence.
  • A judge has allowed large portions of Davis’s 2008 police proffer, public interviews and his book into evidence, narrowing the case onto whether jurors accept those earlier statements.
  • The New York Post’s report of a 2023 jail call in which Davis appears to say “Oh, yeah, I did” when asked about writing the book has emerged as a key development that could undercut his post-arrest recantations.
  • Nevada law lets prosecutors charge organizers as principals, so they aim to prove Davis supplied the gun or ordered the hit rather than prove he pulled the trigger, and a conviction could bring life in prison.
  • The prosecution’s case must contend with decades-old gaps in physical evidence, several deceased or reluctant witnesses, and the long-running West Coast–East Coast hip-hop feud that frames the 1996 attack and the family’s push for closure.