Recommendations of the Editorial team
The man charged with murder for his alleged role in the 1996 shooting of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur has failed in his bid to suppress key evidence he says was obtained through an unlawful nighttime search. A judge denied the request at a hearing on Tuesday (Feb. 17, 2026), a courtroom source confirmed to ROLLING STONE.
Defense speaks of “misleading image”
Duane “Keffe D” Davis and his attorneys, William Brown and Robert Draskovich, had argued in their court briefs that investigators had painted a “misleading picture” of Davis in their search warrant application submitted to a magistrate judge. They said the affidavit unfairly portrays Davis as a potentially armed and dangerous drug dealer who could provoke a confrontation with police, thereby endangering his neighbors.
Defense attorneys argued in documents obtained by ROLLING STONE that Davis was a retired grandfather and cancer survivor who “politely cooperated” when an investigator knocked on his door during the day before the search in July 2023 and his subsequent arrest in September 2023. At the time, defense attorneys said, Davis was living a quiet life with his wife in a Las Vegas suburb and asked only to get a lawyer before speaking to police.
Accusations of strategic omissions
The lawyers said police made “strategic omissions” when they later portrayed Davis as a “multiple convicted felon” with a gun possession arrest, without mentioning that his drug possession convictions occurred 25 years ago and that his gun possession arrest eight years earlier had not resulted in a conviction.
According to the lawyers, Davis gave up drug trafficking in 2008 and was legally employed as an inspector at an oil refinery for a decade. The image presented to obtain the search warrant “had little to do with reality,” the lawyers argued.
In their application for a search warrant, excerpts of which ROLLING STONE obtained in court documentsClifford Mogg, a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said officers wanted to search Davis’ home at night because “the darkness allows officers to surround and secure the home.” He added that the darkness would allow officers to evacuate neighboring homes “with minimal disruption to residents” should Davis or others in the home attempt to “barricade” themselves. Davis and his attorneys argued that the safety argument made no sense because neighbors tended to be home at night.
Indictment and previous statements
Davis, 62, has pleaded not guilty to a single count of murder and is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center. Prosecutors allege he orchestrated Shakur’s drive-by murder and supplied the .40-caliber Glock used to injure Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight, who was on the Las Vegas Strip. Authorities say the attack was in retaliation after Shakur argued with Orlando Anderson at a casino hours earlier on Sept. 6, 1996.
In his 2019 memoir, Davis described his rise in the South Side Crips and admitted to signing a cooperation agreement with federal authorities in connection with a drug case in Los Angeles. In a 2008 interview with law enforcement, he claimed that Sean Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, offered $1 million to kill Knight and Shakur as part of a feud.
Combs has vehemently denied this claim. Davis said an accomplice named Eric “Zip” Martin supplied the gun, which he passed to the back seat of a rented Cadillac, where Anderson allegedly used it to open fire. Davis said he never received any money for it.
Defense speaks of “entertainment”
While the prosecution claims that Davis’ tell-all memoirs and interviews constitute key evidence in the case, the defense insists that it was all for show. His lawyers argued that the statements were “entertainment” intended to generate profit. They compared the public’s cultural fixation on the death of Tupac to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, arguing that it is easy to understand why someone might falsely place themselves at the center of attention for personal gain.
Anderson denied any involvement in the shooting before he was killed in Compton in 1998 at age 23. The police never found the alleged murder weapon. Davis previously failed in an attempt to have the charges dropped. His trial, which has been postponed several times, is scheduled for August 10.
