Man Charged in Tupac Shakur’s Murder Seeks to Dismiss Case

LAS VEGAS—A former gang leader is attempting to have all charges against him dropped in connection with the 1990s murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

Attorney Carl Arnold submitted the motion on Monday in Nevada’s District Court asking for the dismissal of charges against Duane Davis regarding the 1996 shooting of Shakur. The motion claims “egregious” violations of constitutional rights due to a 27-year delay in prosecution. It also argues the absence of corroborating evidence and the failure to uphold immunity agreements provided to Davis by federal and local authorities.

“The prosecution has not provided a valid reason for a decades-long delay that has irreparably harmed my client,” Arnold stated in a press release. “Additionally, the failure to respect immunity agreements raises serious doubts about the integrity of the criminal justice system and calls this prosecution into question.”

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has not yet responded to an email requesting comment on the motion. He has previously stated that there is strong evidence against Davis, leaving it to a jury to assess the credibility of Davis’s accounts of the shooting, including those disclosed in a 2019 memoir.

Originally from Compton, California, Davis was arrested in connection with the case in September 2023, near Las Vegas. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and has been seeking release following his arrest.

Davis is alleged to have orchestrated and facilitated the shooting that resulted in Shakur’s death and injured rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight after a confrontation at a Las Vegas Strip casino involving Shakur and Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.

Authorities have indicated that the gunfire was a result of rivalry between East Coast members of a Bloods gang faction and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, vying for control in a genre then referred to as “gangsta rap.”

In interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir detailing his life as a leader of a Crips gang faction in Compton, Davis claimed he acquired a .40-caliber handgun and gave it to Anderson in the back seat of a vehicle from which, according to authorities, shots were fired at Shakur and Knight in another vehicle at an intersection near the Las Vegas Strip. Davis did not specify Anderson as the shooter.

Shakur succumbed to his injuries a week later in a nearby hospital at the age of 25. Knight survived and is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence linked to the killing of a Compton man in 2015.

Anderson denied any involvement in Shakur’s murder and passed away in 1998 at the age of 23 in a shooting incident in Compton. The other two men present in the car have also since died.

A Las Vegas police detective testified before a grand jury, indicating that police do not possess the firearm used to shoot at Shakur and Knight, nor did they recover the vehicle from which the shots were fired.