Particle.news
Download on the App Store

Judge Clears Defendant’s Memoir for Use in Tupac Murder Trial

The decision preserves the prosecution’s central evidence so jurors will hear Duane Davis’s own admissions before the August trial.

Overview

  • Judge Carli Kierny ruled on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, that Davis’s 2019 memoir and his recorded police statements are admissible in the upcoming criminal trial.
  • Davis, 63, is charged with murder with a deadly weapon tied to promoting or assisting a gang and his trial remains scheduled to begin on August 10, 2026.
  • The memoir, Compton Street Legend, contains passages in which Davis says he was in the Cadillac and supplied the weapon used in the 1996 drive-by that wounded Tupac Shakur.
  • The judge rejected defense claims that the book was ghostwritten or that earlier interviews were protected by a proffer agreement, finding Davis repeatedly adopted the book’s accounts as his own.
  • The rulings keep the case focused on whether jurors will treat Davis’s public statements as confessions and allow prosecutors to present a memoir-driven, gang-motivation theory at trial.