Judge says she suspects a cover-up of the true source of bail funds for man charged in Tupac killing

LAS VEGAS — A judge on Tuesday again rejected a request to free an ailing former Los Angeles-area gang leader ahead of his murder trial in the 1996 killing of hip-hop star Tupac Shakur, saying she suspects a cover-up related to the source of the funds for his bond.

The decision from Clark District Court Judge Carli Kierny came after an attorney for Duane “Keffe D” Davis said he would provide additional records to prove that the music record executive offering to underwrite Davis' $750,000 bail had obtained the money legally. But Kierny said she was skeptical after receiving two identical letters apparently from an entertainment company that Cash “Wack 100” Jones says wired him the funds as payment for his work.

One letter was signed with a name that has no ties to the company, the judge said, while the second letter included a misspelled name and a return address tied to a doctor's office.

“I have a sense that things are trying to be covered up,” Kierny said.

The hearing took a turn when Davis' lawyer, Carl Arnold, told the judge that the bail bond agent used by Davis had provided the entertainment company with copy-and-paste instructions on the language for the letters and could therefore testify about their legitimacy.

In a scathing response, prosecutor Binu Palal said the bond dealer may have committed a felony crime by submitting “a false document to this court.”

“The state takes that very seriously," he said. "Be advised that it will not go uninvestigated.”

Both Palal and Arnold declined to comment further.

Davis has sought to be released since shortly after his September 2023 arrest, which made him the only person ever to be charged in one of hip-hop’s most enduring mysteries. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

Also Tuesday, Kierny pushed back the start of Davis’ trial from Nov. 4 to March 17.

Kierny previously rejected Davis' bid to have Jones put up $112,500 for his release to house arrest. Adding to her concerns, she said at the time, was the question of whether the pair planned to profit by selling Davis' life story.

Nevada has a law, sometimes called a “slayer statute,” that prohibits convicted killers from profiting from their crimes.

Jones, who has managed artists including Johnathan “Blueface” Porter and Jayceon “The Game” Taylor, testified in June that he wanted to help Davis because he was fighting cancer and had “always been a monumental person in our community ... especially the urban community.”

Davis himself has said in interviews and in his 2019 tell-all memoir that he is the only living suspect in the fatal drive-by shooting of Shakur nearly 28 years ago at a traffic light near the Las Vegas Strip.

Authorities say that the gunfire stemmed from competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for dominance in a genre known at the time as “gangsta rap.”