Back in December, Duane "Keefe D" Davis filed a motion to exclude certain pieces of evidence from his upcoming trial. He's accused of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur. The motion cites items seized from Keefe D's Nevada home during a nighttime raid in July of 2023, just months before his arrest. His attorneys allege that the search was unlawful and that investigators painted a “misleading portrait” of their client in the search warrant application presented to a magistrate judge.
"When officers obtain nighttime authorization through bad faith, courts agree suppression is appropriate,” the motion stated. "Bad faith is evident from the face of the affidavit supporting the search warrant. [...] First, the court unwittingly relied on a misleading portrait of Davis as a dangerous drug dealer. When in fact, his drug convictions were [25] years old. He was a [60]-year-old retired cancer survivor that had lived quietly in the same Henderson home for nearly a decade.
"Second, the court overlooked the case-specific urgency or safety concerns Nevada law requires to justify nighttime searches," the motion continued. "[It accepted] instead generic safety theories that would apply to virtually any search of any home."
When Is Keefe D's Trial?
At a hearing earlier this week, however, Rolling Stone reports that a judge denied the motion. Keefe D is currently being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center. He pleaded not guilty to murder in 2023. His trial is expected to begin this August after being pushed back last year due to the overwhelming amount of evidence his team still has to review.
In December of 2024, Keefe D got into an altercation with another inmate while awaiting his trial. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 16 to 40 months behind bars for it. “This is wrong," he said after the sentencing. "I got attacked. My parents brought me up to protect yourself, and that’s all I was doing, protecting myself. This is totally wrong.”
