On the evening of 7 September 1996, a white BMW pulled alongside a black BMW on Flamingo Road in Las Vegas, and the world lost one of its most electrifying voices. Tupac Shakur, who had attended the Mike Tyson–Bruce Seldon boxing match only hours before, died from his wounds six days later. The shooter was never charged. For twenty-eight years, the case gathered dust — until Monday morning, when Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a 63-year-old former gang leader, walked into a Las Vegas courtroom in a blue suit and tie, paused to scan the audience, and sat down to face a jury of sixteen.

Davis is accused of being, in the words of chief deputy district attorney Binu Palal, "the on-the-ground, on-site commander of the effort to kill Tupac" — a killing that prosecutors say was planned in cold retaliation for an attack by Shakur's entourage on Davis's nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, caught on video that same night. What makes this trial almost cinematically strange is that the most damaging testimony against Davis appears to come from Davis himself: a 2019 memoir in which he acknowledged a role in the shooting has been identified by authorities as a cornerstone of the case. Palal promised the jury that they would hear Davis describe his own alleged guilt, in his own recorded words. Yet the defence has built its counter-argument on precisely that strangeness.

Michael Sanft, Davis's lawyer, reminded the jury that multiple agencies — including the FBI — had previously heard Davis speak about the killing and chosen not to act, reportedly because they found his account lacking in credibility.