Documentary producers Michael Dorsey and Mario Diaz testified this week that Duane “Keefe D” Davis’s televised accounts of Tupac Shakur’s killing were researched and unscripted, undermining defence claims that he fabricated the stories for money, as the murder trial entered its second week in Las Vegas, per allhiphop.com.
Filmmaker Michael Dorsey returned to the stand on Monday, as defence attorney Michael Sanft continued to argue that Davis repeatedly sold fiction as fact for attention and financial gain. Sanft told jurors in his opening statement that the prosecution’s version of events was fiction dressed up as fact.
Dorsey and Death Row Chronicles director Mario Diaz both worked on Davis’s 2017 interviews, which followed years of research into Shakur and his 1996 killing. Dorsey said his aim was both to uncover the truth and to tell a story of public interest. Diaz testified on Friday that he had not scripted or coached Davis’s answers, saying his work met strict journalistic standards and that nothing in the interviews was predetermined, though he had briefly outlined his line of questioning beforehand.
Dorsey said he helped develop interview questions, listened to Davis live from another room, and sent follow-up queries to Diaz during both sessions. He also made a phone recording of the interview feed, which prosecutors later obtained after subpoenaing him for the preserved audio. Their testimony gives prosecutors a direct rebuttal to the defence’s argument that Davis’s public interviews were manufactured for entertainment.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal has told jurors that Davis, while not the shooter, organised the retaliatory attack after Shakur’s entourage assaulted his nephew, Orlando Anderson, at the MGM Grand. Palal said jurors would hear this account from Davis himself.
Jurors have also heard a protected 2008 police task-force interview in which Davis described securing the firearm and passing it into the rear seat of the Cadillac used in the shooting. That interview was conducted under an agreement barring investigators from using his statements against him, provided he met the deal’s conditions. Prosecutors argue his later public interviews echoed details from that account, while the defence maintains those stories were profitable fiction.
Davis has pleaded not guilty. Under Nevada law, he faces a possible life sentence if convicted of murder. Suge Knight remains listed as a prosecution witness while serving a 28-year California sentence for an unrelated voluntary manslaughter conviction.
•Featured image: Tupac Shakur/Ernie Paniccioli/startraksphoto.com