Tupac Shakur's Sister Says Family Never Expected Justice as Murder Trial Opens in Las Vegas
Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was shot dead on a Las Vegas street, the murder trial of the man accused of orchestrating the killing has begun — and the rapper's sister says her family never expected it to deliver justice.
Sekyiwa Shakur, Tupac's sister, told Law & Crime Network in an interview aired on Tuesday, Aug. 18 that the family entered the proceedings with low expectations. "Because of the history of America and our family's history here, we have no expectations or low expectations of the criminal system ever," she said Billboard.
She said that young Black boys' lives and deaths tend to be swept under the rug in America, and that the family did not hold high hopes from the beginning.
The trial of Duane "Keffe D" Davis opened on Monday, Aug. 17 in a Las Vegas courtroom with opening statements and witness testimony. Davis, a former Los Angeles gang leader, was arrested in September 2023 and charged with first-degree murder for allegedly masterminding the drive-by shooting that killed Shakur in September 1996. He is not accused of being the triggerman, but prosecutors say he is the sole surviving member of the group that carried out the attack Reuters.
At opening statements, a prosecutor told jurors that the shooting was "an act of revenge" carried out after Shakur was involved in a melee at a Las Vegas casino earlier that night in which Davis's nephew, Orlando Anderson, was jumped. Tupac Shakur was 25 years old when he died Billboard.
Jury selection had begun a week earlier, on Aug. 10, according to Reuters. Witnesses to the 1996 killing testified on the trial's first day, CNN reported. Some members of Shakur's family left the courtroom before prosecutors displayed autopsy photos, according to the Associated Press.
The trial is expected to run for at least four additional weeks of testimony.
Tupac Shakur, one of the most commercially successful figures in hip-hop history, was shot on the night of Sept. 7, 1996, after a Mike Tyson boxing match on the Las Vegas Strip. He died six days later, on Sept. 13. The killing went unsolved for decades until Davis was charged last year, making him the first and only person to face a murder trial in the case.
