LAS VEGAS – Sparks flew in court Tuesday as a Nevada judge rebuked a defense attorney and an ailing former Los Angeles-area gang leader lashed out against prosecutors during his renewed effort to be freed from jail to house arrest ahead of his trial in the 1996 killing of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur.
Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny, who last month rejected Duane “Keffe D” Davis' bid to have a hip-hop music figure put up $112,500 to obtain Davis' $750,000 bail bond, issued a terse written order hours later giving Davis' lawyer, Carl Arnold, one week to provide more documentation about the source of the money.
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The judge said she wanted “to lay to rest the court’s concern" that music executive Cash “Wack 100” Jones was "acting as a front or middleman for some other entity or person.”
In court, Kierny accused Arnold of shaping media attention about the case involving one of hip-hop music's most enduring mysteries.
“It seems like your plan, your end goal here, is to make some kind of show for the press of this trial,” Kierny said.
“That’s not my end goal here, your honor,” Arnold responded. “My end goal is to win the trial. If they want to follow me with cameras, they can do that.”
Arnold was recently featured in a British tabloid report that said he was fielding offers for a film crew to follow him working on Davis' behalf. The article quoted Arnold calling Shakur's death a “legacy” legal case and invoking the memory of Johnnie Cochran, a defense attorney for O.J. Simpson during his 1995 trial in Los Angeles. Cochran, who died in 2005, was famously credited with showing jurors a glove and saying, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit."
Davis has been held in a Las Vegas jail since his arrest last September. He stood in shackles and complained about police and prosecutors reviewing material compiled by a former Los Angeles police detective, Greg Kading, for a 2011 book about the killings of Shakur in Las Vegas and rival rap icon Christopher Wallace six months later in Los Angeles. Wallace was known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls.
“Them boxes should not be allowed," Davis said of records now being examined by police and prosecutors for possible evidence ahead of his trial, scheduled for Nov. 4.
“Mr. Greg Kading had those boxes at his house for 15 years in his attic doing all kind of TV interviews," Davis said. "He broke a proper agreement, and he broke the law, all kinds of stuff."
Davis also accused the prosecutors, Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal, of "trashing my family in this.”
“They not only ugly on the outside but they ugly on the inside too,” Davis said. “These two dudes right here.”
DiGiacomo and Palal did not respond later to requests for comment.
Davis said in his own 2019 tell-all memoir — on leading a street gang in his hometown of Compton, California — that he was promised immunity from prosecution when he told authorities in Los Angeles what he knew about the shootings of Shakur and Wallace.
No arrests have ever been made in the Wallace case. Davis is the only person ever charged in the Shakur killing.
Kading said by telephone Tuesday that he turned over his investigative records to Las Vegas police this year — several months after Davis was indicted and arrested at his home in suburban Henderson, Nevada. Kading said he broke no laws and none of the material was obtained or kept illegally.
“I don’t lose sleep over the fact that a confessed murderer is at odds with me for sharing information about his involvement in a murder,” Kading said. “None of what he said reveals new information. It’s well known. It was based on investigative resources from when I was at the LAPD.”
Nevada law prohibits convicted killers from profiting from their crime. But Arnold argued that since Davis hasn't been convicted, it didn't matter if Davis and Jones a record executive offering to underwrite Davis' $750,000 bail, plan to profit from selling Davis’ life story.
Jones, who has managed artists including Johnathan “Blueface” Porter and Jayceon “The Game” Taylor, testified in June that he wanted to put up money for Davis because Davis was fighting cancer and had “always been a monumental person in our community ... especially the urban community.”
Arnold on Tuesday characterized Davis’ story as intensely interesting to the public with or without mention of the Shakur killing. He called his client “one of the most notorious gang leaders of all of Southern California” and “the godfather of Compton.”
The attorney declined to comment following the court hearing.
The judge decided June 26 she wasn't convinced that Davis and Jones weren’t planning to profit. She also said she couldn’t determine if Jones wasn't serving as a “middleman” on behalf of another unnamed person.
Palal said in court that a judge can set any condition deemed necessary to ensure that a defendant returns to court for trial. If Davis is allowed to post a “gift" for release, he'd have no incentive to comply with court orders or appear for trial, the prosecutor said.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. If he's convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison. He and prosecutors say he's the only person still alive who was in a car from which shots were fired into another car nearly 28 years ago, killing Shakur and wounding rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Authorities allege that the shooting stemmed from competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang and West Coast parts of a Crips gang, including Davis, for dominance in a musical genre known at the time as “gangsta rap.”
Knight, now 59, is serving 28 years in a California prison for killing a Compton businessman with a vehicle in 2015.