The man accused with the 1996 murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur has plead not guilty ahead of a grand jury trial in Las Vegas.

Tupac Shakur’s murder rocked the music world in 1996. No one had ever been officially charged for the killing in the 27 years since the event. Earlier this year though, Las Vegas police made advances in the case.

Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis was arrested on 29 September from a home in Henderson, Las Vegas, in part following his own descriptions in recent years about orchestrating the deadly drive-by shooting.

Davis is the only person still alive who was in the vehicle from which shots were fired and the only person ever charged with a crime in the case.

In court on Thursday, Davis stood in shackles as he awaited proceedings and waved to his wife, son and daughter in the packed spectator gallery. He pleaded “not guilty” to Clark County District Court Judge Tierra Jones.

The judge told Davis that prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty in the case, which could put Davis in prison for the rest of his life if he is convicted. Jones also named county special public defenders Robert Arroyo and Charles Cano to represent Davis at taxpayer expense, after Davis lost his bid to hire private defence attorney Ross Goodman.

Goodman two weeks ago said prosecutors lack witnesses and key evidence, including a gun or vehicle, for the killing committed 27 years ago. Outside the courtroom on Thursday, Goodman said Davis was still trying to hire him. Davis’ family members declined to comment.

Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis appears for his arraignment at the Regional Justice Center, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, in Las Vegas.Ethan Miller/2023 Getty Images

Davis, 60, is originally from Compton, California. The indictment alleges Davis obtained and provided a gun to someone in the back seat of a Cadillac before the car-to-car gunfire that mortally wounded Shakur and wounded rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight at an intersection just off the Las Vegas Strip. Shakur died a week later. He was 25.

Knight, now 58, is in prison in California, serving a 28-year sentence for the death of a Compton businessman in 2015. He has not responded to messages through his attorneys seeking comment about Davis’ arrest.

Prosecutors allege that Shakur’s killing in Las Vegas came out of competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for dominance in a musical genre dubbed “gangsta rap.”

Tupac Shakur in 1996
FRANK WIESE/AP1996

Prosecutors told a grand jury that Davis implicated himself in the killing in multiple interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir that described his life leading a Crips sect in Compton. Davis has said he obtained a .40-caliber handgun and handed it to Anderson, a member of Davis’ gang, in the back seat of a Cadillac, though he didn’t identify Anderson as the shooter.

Anderson, then 22, denied involvement in Shakur’s killing and died two years later in a shooting in his hometown of Compton. The other back seat passenger and the driver of the Cadillac are also dead.

In his book, Davis wrote that he told authorities in 2010 what he knew of the killings of Shakur and gang rival Notorious B.I.G, whose legal name is Christopher Wallace, to protect himself and 48 of his Southside Compton Crips gang associates from prosecution and the possibility of life sentences in prison.

Wallace, also known as Biggie Smalls, was shot and killed in Los Angeles in March 1997, six months after Shakur’s death.