The arrest of Duane “Keffe D” Davis in connection with the long-unsolved 1996 murder in Las Vegas of rap superstar Tupac Shakur made international news in September 2023.

Since then, the case has grown quiet as the legal battle has slowly ground toward a scheduled February 2026 trial date.

The evidence in the case as outlined by police and prosecutors appears daunting, or at least attention-grabbing. It didn’t help the defense that Davis, the last of four prime suspects in an infamous homicide, published a memoir in which he boasts of taking part in the murder conspiracy. To be fair, Davis isn’t the only player with literary ambitions associated with the case.

A motion to suppress evidence filed Oct. 28 in Clark County District Court holds the potential to shine a different light on the case. Defense attorneys Robert Draskovich and Michael Pandullo are apparently seeking to suppress evidence gathered during the execution of a shock-and-awe nighttime search warrant on July 17, 2023, at Davis’ Henderson residence.

Most suppression motions don’t go far — in fact, Draskovich and Pandullo later withdrew their motion — but it begs an interesting question: Nearly 30 years after the murder, was there really a need to search the house just before 10 p.m.? What was the rush?

In its since-withdrawn motion, the defense contends the decision to raid the house on Maple Shade Street at 9:44 p.m. wasn’t necessary and violated the applicable state law covering “nighttime service” of search warrants. It’s requesting a suppression hearing before Clark County District Judge Carli Kierny.

By Nevada law, search warrants are served between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. unless circumstances spelled out in the warrant affidavit make the case for greater urgency.

“Here, the lack of exigency is even more pronounced: the alleged offense occurred in 1996, and the warrant was executed in 2023. Whatever evidence law enforcement hoped to recover had existed for 27 years,” they wrote. “There was no imminent risk that evidence would be lost if execution waited until 7:00 a.m. the next morning.”

A notorious leader of the South Side Compton Crips, Davis has a long criminal record. In his 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend, he recounts his childhood in the California city, early criminal influences and rise as a street king. He also shares details of the night of Sept. 7, 1996, when Tupac Shakur suffered fatal gunshot wounds just off the Strip after the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight championship fight at the MGM Grand. Davis is suspected of leading the murder conspiracy and providing the shooter, his nephew Orlando Anderson, the murder weapon.

All the facts and suspicions surrounding the case are worn by the passage of time and complicated by Davis’ cooperation in a federal criminal investigation for which he received a form of limited immunity for information he provided to authorities.

The police search warrant affidavit was written by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Section Detective Clifford Mogg. Now retired, Mogg spent three decades with the department and more than 20 years working murder cases. He was no stranger to writing search warrants, but he was not the original case agent. He took up the file relatively late in his career.

“If the State could wait twenty-seven years to seek this warrant, there was no lawful basis to claim that it could not wait until daylight hours to execute it,” the motion reads. “The ‘nighttime service’ clause invalidates the warrant. All evidence seized must be suppressed.”

The search warrant was signed by District Judge Jacqueline M. Bluth. Police sought computers, electronic storage devices, cellphones, writings, books and videos linked to the Tupac shooting.

Davis, now 62, is charged with a single murder count. With the closest witnesses to the deadly shooting either dead or, like Marion “Suge” Knight, refusing to implicate Davis, his literary admissions and whatever circumstantial evidence was gathered from the search warrant figure to play an integral role in the prosecution, led by chief deputy district attorneys Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal.

First it appears they’ll have to answer a question that defense attorneys are likely to repeat time and again: What was the rush?

“This case presents the strongest possible contrast: if the State could wait twenty-seven years to act, it could wait twelve more hours,” Davis’ attorneys contend. “Authorizing a nighttime entry under these circumstances is unconstitutional.”

At the very least, it’s one more twist in a murder case now approaching its 30th year.

This story was updated at 12:13 p.m. on 11/4/2025 to reflect that defense attorneys withdrew their motion to suppress evidence.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.