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Tupac Shakur Murder Trial Underway 30 Years After Rapper’s Death 

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This week, the trial for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur began its initial proceedings in Las Vegas. 30-years-ago, one of the most high-profile unsolved killings in the US occurred, and now jury selection has begun for the trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips gang in California. 

Prosecutors are aiming to show that 63-year-old Davis ordered the killing and provided the gun for the murder of Shakur. 75 potential jurors were called to the courthouse on Monday to be questioned about their ability to be fair and impartial in such a high-profile trial. 

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Davis is facing a potential life sentence without parole if he is convicted. 

On September 7th 1996, Shakur was shot and killed at the height of his career, he was 25-years-old. At the time, Shakur was sitting in the passenger seat of a black BMW with Marion “Suge” Knight in Vegas after watching a boxing match and going to a club to perform. 

Although Davis is not alleged to have fired the gun himself, he is the only person to be charged in the killing and is accused of murder with a deadly weapon. The trial is expected to last around a month with judge Carli Kierny. 

Reports indicate that prosecutors believe that Davis is the only person still alive out of the group that attacked Shakur and Knight. They will be presenting evidence material specifically from Davis’s book Compton Street Legend, which was published in 2019 and described the shooting in detail. 

When Shakur was murdered, there was a massive ongoing debate regarding who did it and why. It also highlighted the intensity of the hip-hop rivalry between the east coast and the west coast. 

Within this coastal rivalry was Los Angeles-based Death Row Records, founded by Marion “Suge” Knight, and east coast label Bad Boy Records, created by Sean Combs and featuring Christopher Wallace, more commonly known as “the Notorious BIG,” who was murdered less than a year after Shakur: March 1997. 

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Prosecutors stated that Death Row Records was protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang that was affiliated with the larger Bloods alliance. Knight was also affiliated with the group, and Bad Boy Records also hired rival group South Side Compton Crips, which was led by Davis. 

The prosecution also emphasized, according to reports, that after the boxing match, Knight and Shakur both attacked Davis’s nephew in retribution for an alleged assault on a Death Row employee, prompting Davis to want revenge. 

So why exactly has it taken three decades for this case to finally go to trial? The simple answer is a lack of evidence. However, once Davis published his memoir, the cold case was reheated due to the fact that he wrote about how he handed a pistol from where he was in the front seat of his car to those in the back seat of the vehicle as they pulled alongside Shakur’s vehicle. 

What was revealed in Davis’s memoir also coincided with remarks he made to reporters in the past, however, the publishing led to his arrest in September 2023. 

Davis has pleaded not guilty, backtracking on all his previous statements, on the basis of no evidence against him. He also claimed that his co-actor “inflated a tale.” 

In May of this year, Shakur’s stepbrother, Maurice Shakur, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in civil court. 

“There remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes,” his complaint says.

jury

Judge Rules Jury Will Be Anonymous in Luigi Mangione’s State Murder Trial

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The jury that will decide Luigi Mangione’s state murder case will remain anonymous, a New York judge ruled Tuesday as attorneys moved closer to finalizing preparations for the closely watched trial.

Justice Gregory Carro announced the decision at the start of a Manhattan court hearing, saying jurors’ identities would be protected. While the public will not know the jurors’ identities, the lawyers on both sides are still expected to have access to their names. New York courts generally reserve that level of secrecy for unusually prominent cases or proceedings where juror safety and outside influence are concerns.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Sept. 8, with the trial expected to run for approximately six weeks. Mangione, 28, has pleaded not guilty to multiple state charges stemming from the December 2024 fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the New York Hilton Midtown.

Mangione’s state case includes a second-degree murder charge, which could carry a sentence of 25 years to life if he is convicted.

One of the next major steps will be determining how prospective jurors are questioned about a case that has already attracted international attention. Carro instructed prosecutors and defense attorneys Tuesday to work together on a jury questionnaire designed to identify possible bias and address concerns from both sides.

It remained unclear when the questionnaire would be completed, though Mangione’s defense told NBC News it expects to have a proposed version this week.

Prospective jurors who clear that initial screening will undergo further questioning through voir dire. Jury questionnaires generally allow attorneys and the judge to learn about candidates’ backgrounds, beliefs and experiences before questioning them more extensively in court.

Former Manhattan prosecutor Rebecca Roiphe told NBC News that prosecutors are likely to pay particular attention to prospective jurors’ experiences with the healthcare system because of the alleged motive in Thompson’s killing.

“I think the prosecution is clearly going to want to keep off people who have some kind of ax to grind about healthcare.”

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Roiphe, a criminal law and ethics professor at New York Law School, said Mangione’s attorneys, meanwhile, could seek jurors with a “healthcare-for-all mindset.”

Attorneys are also likely to scrutinize potential jurors’ attitudes toward law enforcement and politics, Roiphe said, even though the issues surrounding Mangione’s case do not necessarily fall neatly along partisan lines.

Prosecutors have alleged that Mangione was driven by hostility toward the health insurance industry. However, he had never been a UnitedHealthcare customer and had no known connection to Thompson.

Authorities say Mangione followed Thompson and tracked his movements while the healthcare executive was in New York for his company’s investors conference.

Prosecutors allege Mangione approached Thompson outside the Midtown hotel and shot him from behind before leaving New York. He was arrested several days later in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after an employee at a McDonald’s contacted police.

The case drew widespread attention almost immediately, beginning with the dayslong search for Thompson’s killer and continuing as the shooting became a flashpoint in broader arguments over the cost and accessibility of health care in the United States.

The intense attention surrounding the case was apparent again Tuesday, when the courtroom filled with journalists and some Mangione supporters. Several supporters wore green, apparently in reference to Luigi, the Nintendo character from the Super Mario franchise and its film adaptations.

Mangione entered from a holding area dressed in a gray suit. He looked around the courtroom before sitting beside his attorneys, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan.

The hearing is also expected to be Mangione’s last court appearance before jury selection begins in September. One woman in the gallery wore a shirt that read, “Open the courtroom what are you hiding.”

Supporters, many of them women, have repeatedly appeared at Mangione’s pretrial proceedings, and some have publicly argued that Thompson’s killing was justified.

The level of public interest has also prompted a dispute over how much access journalists and spectators will have once the trial begins.

Before Tuesday’s conference, Mangione’s attorneys and the Manhattan district attorney’s office exchanged arguments over the amount of courtroom space that would be available to the press and members of the public.

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The defense accused prosecutors of improperly attempting to restrict attendance, arguing that limiting access could also influence how the proceedings are covered.

In one of the letters preceding the hearing, Agnifilo accused prosecutors and court officials of exerting improper influence over which reporters would be allowed inside, arguing that the process failed to meet constitutional standards for public access. Prosecutor Joel Seidemann pushed back, calling the accusation “baseless” and asking Carro to reprimand the defense.

Prosecutors disputed that characterization and said their objections were instead tied in part to concerns about protecting witnesses and maintaining the integrity of the proceedings.

“We are particularly concerned about the possibility that a spectator in an overflow room will clandestinely record the proceedings and share any such recordings with others.”

Seidemann also alleged that some Mangione supporters have attempted to intimidate witnesses and interfere with the jury process, adding to prosecutors’ concerns about the “extraordinary pressure on witnesses and potential jurors alike.”

Carro rejected the defense’s assertion that prosecutors were responsible for restricting courtroom access, saying the district attorney’s office does not control those arrangements. He described the allegation of prosecutorial meddling as “a reckless mischaracterization.”

The back-and-forth adds to a series of increasingly sharp exchanges between the two sides as the September trial approaches.

The judge nevertheless announced expanded public and media accommodations for the trial. Following complaints from the defense about possible space constraints, court administrators secured an additional overflow room.

“It has always been under consideration. They had to find the physical place, and it had to be staffed,” Carro said.

Outside the courthouse, Marc Agnifilo said he welcomed the additional space, though he would prefer even more.

“I think it actually changed the complexion of the coverage of the trial. … I think there should be two overflow rooms, but I’ll take one,” Agnifilo said.

Mangione also faces a separate federal prosecution in New York involving stalking-related charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty. The Justice Department had previously sought the death penalty in the federal case, but capital punishment was removed as a possibility earlier this year.

Derek Chauvin Set To Go On Trial For The Murder Of George Floyd This Week 

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The murder trial of Derek Chauvin will begin this week in Minneapolis. Chauvin is charged with the second-and-third-degree murder of George Floyd as well as manslaughter after he detained Floyd over suspicion of passing a $20 counterfeit bill last May. 

In a viral 9-minute video of the interaction between Chauvin and Floyd, the former officer can be seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck while he was already handcuffed and two other officers kept him on the ground. Floyd can be heard multiple times saying that he couldn’t breath and felt like he was about to die. The video then led to some of the biggest protests against racial injustice and police brutality since the 1960s.

In Minneapolis especially, the Black Lives Matter movement began with hundreds of peaceful protests which eventually were turned violent, many times due to police interference. The authorities claim to be planning on increasing the amount of police and national guard presence on the streets ahead of the trial this week. 

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Areva Martin is the Civil rights attorney and commentator who is working with Floyd’s family. Martin recently spoke to the press ahead of the trial this week to discuss how “the family is seeking justice, the public is seeking accountability.”

“The world is waiting to see if the US will be courageous enough to stand up to a system that has a history of violating the rights of African Americans and, rather than protecting those lives, has actually destroyed them.”

The prosecution and defence are mainly concerned with the cause of Floyd’s death and Chauvin’s reasoning for why he felt he had to lean into Floyd’s neck for such an extended period time when he was already detained. 

In an autopsy performed by the Hennepin county medical examiner office, it was determined that Floyd’s death was a homicide due to the fact that he suffered from heart failure brought on by “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” 

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It’s expected that Chauvin’s defence team will focus on the findings that Floyd had heart disease as well, and there was evidence of “fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use,” in his system. Floyd’s team, on the other hand, is expected to focus on the fact that Chauvin had a long history of using excessive force in the past, including multiple incidents of kneeling on people throughout his career. 

After Floyd’s death, Chauvin was fired and arrested, and this marks the beginning of what is likely to be one of the most closely watched court cases in modern history. 

“George Floyd wasn’t the first person to be killed by police on this block, but [in the past] media wasn’t the way that it is and a lot of it got swept under the rug … How do we prevent this from happening? That could be my son. I have two sons,” said Mileesha Smith, a Minneapolis community member who was present at a vigil held this weekend ahead of the trial. 

If Chauvin is charged to the fullest extent, he could face a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.