The trial for Tupac’s murder now seems like nothing more than a media stunt in LA

What is unfolding in recent weeks in a Las Vegas courtroom resembles a trial of an era: in the dock, facing charges for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, sits a 63-year-old former gang leader from Compton, a rough neighbourhood in Los Angeles, whilst, right at the start of the first hearing, photographs from Mike Tyson’s fight on 7 September 1996 are shown to the jury, and excerpts from a memoir are read aloud, as if it were the Gospel. It is the 30th anniversary of a murder that has permeated American culture whilst remaining unsolved, but which today finally has a face to stand trial. Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis is, in fact, the only person charged in connection with the shooting that led to Tupac’s death, and, at the same time, he is the key witness to the crime: the bulk of the evidence against him does not come from a weapon or CCTV footage, but from the words he himself wrote and spoke. In 2019, Davis published "Compton Street Legend", an autobiography in which he gives precise details of how, that night, he got into a white Cadillac with three accomplices, a Glock in his hand, with the specific intention of settling the score for the beating his nephew Orlando Anderson had suffered a few hours earlier, on the sidelines of the boxing match in which Tyson had fought. “The time for talking was over,” writes David in that book, which was intended to capitalise on a criminal legend that seemed to have lost its edge, but which has now become the indictment that could send him behind bars.

Keffe D’s defence, led by Michael Sanft, aims to undermine the credibility of a book which it describes as “prone to hyperbole, containing at least one substantial lie”: “It’s fiction,” Sanft told the jury, asking what other concrete evidence could possibly be produced thirty years after the events, given that witnesses have died, memories have faded and the police file is superficial and incomplete. Sanft’s argument is difficult to refute: Davis exaggerated to sell copies, and there is no one who can prove that he was even in Las Vegas that evening. On the other hand, the prosecution counters by pointing to the consistency displayed by the defendant himself in his own statements, which he has reiterated for a decade in interviews and on television programmes. Among the first witnesses to give evidence was a former police officer who recounted having escorted Shakur in the ambulance that evening; he was wounded but still lucid and defiant: when asked who had shot him, the rapper reportedly replied, ‘We’ll take care of it ourselves’. He did not name names and died six days later, without cooperating with the police, in accordance with a code of honour which, today in the courtroom, has become a black hole in the evidence.

The trial is expected to last a month, with around forty witnesses called. In the end, it is unlikely that it will be established who actually pulled the trigger that evening: the prosecution’s case, in fact, is not that Davis fired the shot (it has often been speculated that Orlando Anderson did so instead), but that he was the mastermind behind the ambush. It is a legal distinction relating to ‘organising a murder with the intent to further the activities of a gang’ – a charge that can lead to a life sentence, even without establishing who actually carried out the murder.

The jury selection process lasted four days and in Vegas it’s showtime in court: among the witnesses is the city’s former mayor, Oscar Goodman, a former gang lawyer and a prominent figure from an era when the Strip and Compton’s underworld intersected every night. At dawn, outside the courthouse, fans queue up to secure a seat in the public gallery, all wearing T-shirts bearing the rapper’s face; he was twenty-five at the time of his death and, in the name of nostalgia steeped in marketing, now appears embalmed as the martyr he never was. Tupac’s past was turbulent and has the flavour of a different nation: born in East Harlem to two Black Panther activists, a lover of classical literature, the author of great lyrics expressing social anger, yet also capable of shooting two off-duty police officers, of being convicted of sexual assault, and of signing a record deal that placed him on the front line of the war between crews on the two American coasts – a commercial tragedy disguised as a feud of honour. Tupac was aware that he was living a life on a knife-edge, and today his rap work matters more than his biography, because of the way he was able to transform news stories into political reflections, giving a voice and dignity to the marginalised Black community in America. Suge Knight, the boss of Death Row Records, recognised his talent and, a year before his death, paid the bail that saw Shakur released from prison, in exchange for which he made him sign a contract for three albums: it was the Faustian pact that Tupac accepted without a murmur, because fame was, for him, the only form of power available.

But thirty years is a long time. 1996 was also the year of the ‘tough-on-crime’ policy, which President Clinton legitimised through the mass incarceration of young Black men from Compton, labelled as a threat to the system. ’96 was before 11 September, before presidents such as Obama and Trump, exactly halfway between the assassination of Martin Luther King and the present day. In ’96, in the eyes of mainstream America, hip hop was still a suspect form of expression, a genre to be feared, censored and blacklisted for moral degeneracy. Today, Kendrick Lamar wins the Pulitzer Prize and performs at the Super Bowl, whilst the children of the white middle class discuss hip hop on their cultural podcasts. The marginalisation that killed Tupac – the gangs, the streets of Compton, the intrigues of Death Row – is now archive material. It is a paradox highlighted by this trial, with its courtroom packed with journalists and cameras, heralding a spectacle reminiscent of the glitz and glamour of the O. J. Simpson show trial. Even so, public opinion across the Atlantic views the event with a mixture of weariness and curiosity regarding this new cold case that has resurfaced in an era saturated with true crime. The well-founded suspicion is that justice has arrived too late: for years, no one had any real interest in solving the murder of a Black man who was considered, at the time, a public order problem. And today the whole affair seems more like a media stunt than an act of social reconciliation. And then there is that glitzy Las Vegas backdrop, the perfect setting for an anachronistic spectacle: old hits, outdated slogans, the dust of a hip-hop scene that struggles to keep pace with contemporary America.