Can prosecutors prove who orchestrated Tupac Shakur’s murder after 30 years?

Belgian audiences following the case through RTBF saw a long-delayed murder trial move into its decisive phase on Monday, 17 August, when prosecutors and defence lawyers delivered opening statements against Duane “Keffe D” Davis in Las Vegas. No Belgian government body or European Union institution is involved: this is a Nevada prosecution. Its connection to Belgium is cultural and journalistic, carried by broadcasters including RTBF and followed by the country’s substantial hip-hop community.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told the Clark County jury that Davis did not fire the fatal shots but planned the attack in retaliation for the beating of his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, earlier that evening. According to the Associated Press, the prosecution intends to rely heavily on Davis’s own recorded interviews and his co-authored 2019 memoir, in which he placed himself in the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired and described supplying a handgun.

Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon committed to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He could receive life imprisonment if convicted. His lawyer, Michael Sanft, called the state’s narrative “fiction” and argued that investigators had assembled a weak case from inconsistent recollections, missing records and statements made for publicity or profit. The burden remains entirely on prosecutors, and Davis must be treated as innocent unless the jury finds otherwise.

The dispute is therefore not simply about reconstructing a famous night. It concerns whether words spoken across different settings — confidential-seeming police interviews, television appearances and a commercially published memoir — can establish criminal responsibility beyond reasonable doubt decades later. Judge Carli Kierny ruled before trial that jurors may hear Davis’s 2008 police interview. Sanft had argued that Davis spoke under an assurance that he would not be prosecuted; prosecutors countered that his subsequent public accounts removed any basis for excluding it, AP reported.

Shakur was travelling in a BMW driven by Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight on 7 September 1996 when a Cadillac pulled alongside at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip. Gunfire struck Shakur several times. He died six days later, aged 25; Knight survived. Hours earlier, Shakur, Knight and members of their entourage had attacked Anderson at the MGM Grand following a Mike Tyson boxing match.

Authorities say Davis was one of four men in the Cadillac and the only one still alive. They do not accuse him of pulling the trigger, and the trial may not determine who did. Under Nevada law, however, someone who knowingly aids or orchestrates a killing can be convicted without firing the weapon. The prosecution plans to call roughly 35 to 45 witnesses during proceedings expected to last about a month, according to AP.

The passage of time cuts both ways. It explains the emotional force of finally placing the case before a jury, particularly for Shakur’s family, while also weakening memories and leaving central witnesses unavailable. The gun and Cadillac were never recovered, AP has reported. Those gaps give the defence room to argue that Davis’s shifting public persona cannot substitute for reliable physical evidence.

The Belgian framing is notably more cultural than institutional. RTBF presented the event as the appearance of a former gang leader nearly three decades after Shakur’s assassination, while earlier Le Soir group coverage emphasised the repeated delays and Davis’s denial. That reflects Shakur’s place in Francophone Belgian music culture: RTBF’s Tarmac platform describes itself as an outlet devoted to urban culture and Belgian hip-hop talent. AP’s courtroom reporting, by contrast, foregrounds the evidential contest between “fact” and “fiction.” Neither the Belgian federal authorities nor the European Commission has announced a position, and none would ordinarily be expected in a US state murder prosecution.

Jurors will next hear the prosecution’s witnesses and the recordings on which much of the case rests. The questions to watch are whether the state can corroborate Davis’s accounts, how the judge instructs jurors on accomplice liability and whether the defence can turn three decades of investigative uncertainty into reasonable doubt. Until a verdict, the central allegation remains unproven.