Judge Considers Sending Former Gang Leader Arrested for Tupac Shakur’s Murder to $750,000 House Arrest

LAS VEGAS — A Nevada judge said Tuesday she was not immediately convinced of the legality of a hip-hop figure’s attempt to post $750,000 bail to free a former Los Angeles-area gang leader from jail ahead of his murder trial in the 1996 killing of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas.

Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny expressed doubts after hearing arguments about whether Duane “Keffe D” Davis should be released from house arrest with electronic monitoring, but said she would review financial records submitted by his benefactor — Cash Jones, a record label executive who has managed artists including rappers The Game and Blueface. In recent years, he has gotten into street fights and made controversial comments about the late Tupac Shakur and Nipsey Hussle.

The judge promised to publish a brief description of her decision in the court record. She did not say when.

Davis’ attorney, Carl Arnold, told reporters outside court that he hoped for a decision later Tuesday. Attorneys Binu Palal and Marc DiGiacomo declined to comment.

Jones, who goes by the moniker “Wack 100,” testified under oath via videoconference from an unspecified location in California. Under questioning by Arnold, Jones said he paid 15 percent of the bail amount, or $112,500, as a “gift” from his business accounts to secure Davis’ release.

“I know him in passing,” Jones said of Davis, a 61-year-old self-described leader of a Crips gang in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton who has been held at the Clark County Detention Center since his arrest last September. Davis and his attorneys have said he is not receiving adequate medical care in jail after being treated for colon cancer before his arrest.

“I know his son,” Jones said of Davis. “We’ve talked a number of times. I know he’s had some health issues.”

“He’s always been an important person in our community,” Jones added during Palal’s questioning. “Especially in the urban community.”

Asked by prosecutors whether he had a contract or financial agreement with Davis for a television or movie deal based on Davis’ self-described gang life and his role in Shakur’s murder, Jones twice replied, “Not yet.”

Nevada has a law sometimes called a “killer law” that prohibits convicted murderers from profiting from their crime. Prison visits and phone calls are also routinely recorded.

The prosecutor played excerpts from a VladTV social media interview in which Jones told his interviewer he would get Davis out of prison “in exchange for a deal to do a series on Mr. Davis’s life.” Palal asked Jones to explain.

“That’s what I told Vlad,” Jones replied, noting that he was paid for the interview to attract viewers. “There’s nothing about Vlad, nothing on YouTube, that says you have to be honest.”

Palal also released a recording of a prison phone call in which Jones describes to Davis a plan to produce “30 to 40 episodes” of a television show based on his life story.

“We’re talking business. I’ll tell you what my idea is,” Jones said. “You have to remember, brother, that this (insult) can embarrass you for the rest of your life.”

Palal told the judge that Jones intended to profit from Davis’ story.

“Mr. Davis is profiting from the new version of his story about the murder of Mr. Shakur. As a result, Mr. Jones, in order to profit, pays the bail bond company,” the prosecutor said. “While it is complicated, it is clear that there is fraud being perpetrated in this courtroom. One way or another … this is an illegal advantage, to profit from this crime.”

The judge ended the 45-minute hearing by saying she had “more questions than answers.” But she agreed to review Jones’ financial records.

Davis asked to be released shortly after his arrest last September, which made him the only person ever charged with a crime in a killing that has generated intense interest and speculation for 27 years.

Davis told Kierny in court in February that donors were “hesitant to come here and help me pay bail because of the media and the circus that’s going on.”

Prosecutors say the gunfire that killed Shakur came from a competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang cult and West Coast groups of a Crips cult, including Davis, for dominance of a musical genre known at the time as “gangsta rap.”

Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. His trial is scheduled for Nov. 4. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

According to police, prosecutors and Davis’ own statements, he is the only person still alive of the four people in the white Cadillac from which shots were fired in September 1996, fatally wounding Shakur and grazing rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight at an intersection near the Las Vegas Strip. Knight, now 59, is serving a 28-year sentence in a California prison for using a vehicle to kill a Los Angeles-area man in 2015.

Davis has publicly identified himself as the organizer of the shooting, but not the shooter. Las Vegas police tried again to solve the case, leading to a search warrant and raid on his Henderson home last July.

Prosecutors say they have strong evidence to convict Davis of murder, based on his own accounts in multiple interviews with police and the media since 2008 — and in a 2019 memoir about his life leading a Compton street gang.

In his book, Davis writes that he was promised immunity if he told Los Angeles authorities what he knew about the fatal shootings of Shakur and his rival, rapper Christopher Wallace, six months later in Los Angeles. Wallace was known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls.

Arnold argues that Davis told stories to make money and that Nevada police and prosecutors lack key evidence, including the gun, the Cadillac and proof that Davis was in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting.