Former gang leader charged with killing Tupac Shakur gets new lawyer, remains jailed on $750G bail

A former Los Angeles-area gang leader jailed in Las Vegas in the 1996 killing of hip-hop music icon Tupac Shakur has hired a private attorney to represent him ahead of his murder trial scheduled this summer.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis dismissed court-appointed lawyers and hired veteran criminal defense attorney Carl Arnold, according to a court filing posted Thursday.

Robert Arroyo, one of Davis' former lawyers from the Clark County Special Public Defender's Office, said Monday that he and co-counsel Charles Cano wished Davis well and referred questions to Arnold, who didn't immediately respond to messages.

Arnold has served during public fatality reviews as representative of relatives of people killed by police. He has also been sanctioned twice by the Nevada State Bar during 20 years of practice.

One, in 2018, was for failing to properly file documents in a defendant’s appeal to the state Supreme Court. The other, in 2021, was for failing to represent a defendant in Las Vegas Justice Court. Each time, Arnold received a written reprimand and was fined $1,500.

Originally from Compton, California, the 60-year-old Davis is the only person still alive who was in the car from which shots were fired in the September 1996 shooting that killed Shakur and wounded rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight. Knight is serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area in 2015.