LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A juror within the battery trial involving the person charged in Tupac Shakur’s homicide advised a choose Wednesday that he by no means improperly mentioned the case.
On April 9, a Clark County jury discovered Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 61, responsible of combating with one other inmate in December on the Clark County Detention Heart. It took the jury 90 minutes to achieve its verdict.
Davis, who faces a homicide cost in Shakur’s demise, has publicly stated he was sitting within the entrance passenger seat of the automobile concerned within the 1996 homicide close to the Las Vegas Strip. Prosecutors later charged Davis with battery by a prisoner and difficult an individual to a struggle. They needed to show the struggle with Rochlon Hamilton, one other inmate in custody on a homicide cost, was not self-defense.
Davis has repeatedly stated he was “attacked” within the struggle and arrange.
In the course of the trial, Clark County District Court docket Decide Nadia Krall repeatedly advised the jury to not talk about the case throughout any break till jury deliberations.
In paperwork filed after the decision, attorneys for Davis alleged a number of jurors mentioned “about inmates fighting about how the little guy has to work harder to preserve his reputation” whereas awaiting lunch throughout a break. Davis’ attorneys weren’t knowledgeable in regards to the dialog till after the decision, they stated.
The juror on the heart of the dialog, whose id the choose ordered to stay confidential, stated he by no means talked about Davis earlier than he and different jurors started deliberating throughout a trial in April. The person additionally stated he didn’t even know who Davis was and didn’t know his connection to the Shakur case.
“No one was talking about the case,” the juror stated Wednesday. “I didn’t even know who he was.”
A nonetheless picture from surveillance footage from the struggle involving Duane “Keffe D” Davis. (LVMPD/KLAS)
Twelve different jurors have been known as into the courtroom independently and weren’t within the room to listen to one another’s testimony. No different juror corroborated the protection’s claims.
Different witnesses included a documentarian chronicling Shakur’s homicide and Davis’ son, Duane Davis Jr. Each advised the choose they overheard the dialog. Prosecutors famous the documentarian had beforehand paid the Davis household.
Davis’ legal professional, Carl Arnold, advised Krall that it was unlikely jurors would have remembered the dialog and that the court docket ought to have eliminated the juror at trial.
Krall denied the request for a brand new trial, saying the marshal discovered of the knowledge after the trial and that the jurors all testified they didn’t hear the reported dialog. She added that the filmmaker and Davis’ son had a “bias” to testify.
Krall scheduled sentencing for Aug. 7.
The trial for Shakur’s homicide was scheduled to start subsequent 12 months.
