Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Tupac Murder Trial Kicks Off with Damning Evidence On Day One

Transcript

Tupac Murder Trial Kicks Off with Damning Evidence On Day One · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Usually when we talk about a criminal trial, you know,
0:02
Speaker 1: there is this baseline expectation of precision. It is almost
0:06
Speaker 1: like engineering.
0:07
Speaker 2: Right, it's supposed to be math exactly.
0:09
Speaker 1: You have a cordoned off crime scene, the forensics team
0:12
Speaker 1: dusts for a fingerprint, ballistics experts match the striations on
0:17
Speaker 1: a bullet, and the prosecutor essentially just points to an
0:19
Speaker 1: evidence board and says, well, there is the undeniable proof
0:22
Speaker 1: of guilt.
0:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that kind of binary, tangible proof is highly
0:27
Speaker 2: comforting to us. We inherently want the justice system to
0:31
Speaker 2: rely on things that could be categorized by hard science.
0:34
Speaker 2: We want a smoking gun to literally be an actual
0:37
Speaker 2: physical gun.
0:38
Speaker 1: But then you step into the courtroom for the trial
0:41
Speaker 1: we are diving into today and suddenly that entire forensic
0:44
Speaker 1: microscope is just shattered. We are looking at a legal
0:47
Speaker 1: landscape where the smoking gun isn't a weapon recovered from
0:50
Speaker 1: an alleyway, but a self published memoir.
0:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's completely wild today.
0:54
Speaker 1: Our mission in this deep dive is to explore the
0:57
Speaker 1: opening statements and the first wave of witness testimony in
1:00
Speaker 1: the trial of Dwayne Keith D. Davis. And you know,
1:04
Speaker 1: for anyone who doesn't immediately recognize that name. The context
1:06
Speaker 1: is impossible to ignore. Davis is the only person ever
1:10
Speaker 1: criminally charged in connection with the nineteen ninety six murder
1:13
Speaker 1: of hip hop icon Tupac Shakor, and our.
1:16
Speaker 2: Goal today is to examine how you even begin to
1:18
Speaker 2: untangle almost thirty years of legal, cultural, and honestly mythological
1:23
Speaker 2: history inside a sterile courtroom. We are looking at an
1:27
Speaker 2: explosive prosecution narrative built almost entirely on decades of the
1:31
Speaker 2: defendant's own media interviews and confessions. And that's stacked up
1:35
Speaker 2: against the defense strategy that claims those confessions are nothing
1:38
Speaker 2: more than elaborate fictional clout chasing, built on top of
1:42
Speaker 2: some of the most shocking institutional police failures of magicable.
1:45
Speaker 1: I mean, just imagine waiting three decades for answers to
1:48
Speaker 1: one of the most dissected mysteries in modern music history,
1:51
Speaker 1: A cold case that is birth entire industries of documentaries
1:54
Speaker 1: and conspiracy theories finally lands in the Las Vegas, Nevada courtroom.
1:58
Speaker 2: It's surreal, it is.
2:00
Speaker 1: But the wild part is the trial doesn't hinge on
2:03
Speaker 1: a new DNA breakthrough. It hinges on a man who,
2:06
Speaker 1: for the last twenty years, seemingly could not stop talking
2:09
Speaker 1: into any microphone put in front of him.
2:12
Speaker 2: It is an incredibly heavy moment, and all of that
2:14
Speaker 2: weight is resting on a very specific small group of people. Yeah,
2:18
Speaker 2: there is a sixteen person jury seated for this. That's
2:22
Speaker 2: ten women and six men, four of whom are alternates. Okay,
2:26
Speaker 2: they hold the ultimate power here. Their specific mandate is
2:30
Speaker 2: to decide if Dwayne Davis is guilty of murder with
2:33
Speaker 2: a deadly weapon with the explicit intent to promote, further
2:37
Speaker 2: or assist a criminal gang.
2:39
Speaker 1: The central tension here is just completely fascinating to me.
2:42
Speaker 1: I mean, the prosecution is essentially saying, look, the defendant
2:44
Speaker 1: bragged his way into this courtroom, so let's use his
2:46
Speaker 1: own words to lock him up, exactly while the defense
2:49
Speaker 1: is standing up and saying, well, my client is a
2:50
Speaker 1: storyteller who realized there was a huge market for this fiction.
2:53
Speaker 1: It feels like this is a deep dive into the
2:55
Speaker 1: mechanics of media and storytelling just as much as it
2:58
Speaker 1: is about the penal code.
3:00
Speaker 2: That is exactly the right lens to view this through.
3:04
Speaker 2: But to understand how a murder trial can rely so
3:06
Speaker 2: heavily on a man repeatedly implicating himself across all these
3:10
Speaker 2: different media platforms. We actually can't start with the murder itself.
3:13
Speaker 1: Right, You have to go back.
3:15
Speaker 2: We have to look at the inciting incident. We need
3:18
Speaker 2: to examine the exact spark that the prosecution claims set
3:21
Speaker 2: this entire machinery in motion on the night of September seventh,
3:25
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six.
3:26
Speaker 1: So if Binu Pal, the lead prosecutor, isn't starting her
3:29
Speaker 1: opening statement with the drive by shooting, where exactly does
3:33
Speaker 1: she anchor the jury's attention.
3:35
Speaker 2: She anchors it to a highly visceral physical event that
3:38
Speaker 2: occurred hours earlier inside the MGM Grand Hotel. It was
3:42
Speaker 2: the night of a Mike Tyson fight, so you know,
3:44
Speaker 2: the energy in Las Vegas was already at a fever pitch.
3:47
Speaker 1: Vegas on a Tyson knight is just a different universe.
3:50
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The prosecution plays surveillance video from the casino floor
3:53
Speaker 2: showing a young man named Orlando Anderson getting brutally attacked.
3:57
Speaker 1: And Orlando Anderson isn't just some random guy who bumped
3:59
Speaker 1: into the wrong c No.
4:01
Speaker 2: Orlando Anderson is Dwayne Keef D. Davis's nephew. The surveillance
4:06
Speaker 2: video clearly captures Tupac Shakur, Souge Knight, a man named
4:10
Speaker 2: Trayvon Lane, and they're extended entourage actively swarming and attacking
4:14
Speaker 2: ander S.
4:15
Speaker 1: Right, they just jump them right in the middle of
4:17
Speaker 1: a crowded casino. But Binny pal makes it clear this
4:20
Speaker 1: wasn't happening in a vacuum. Right. There is a massive
4:23
Speaker 1: pre existing ecosystem of rivalry that turns this casino brawl
4:28
Speaker 1: into a death sentence.
4:29
Speaker 2: Exactly. You cannot understand this trial without understanding the corporate
4:34
Speaker 2: and street level structures at play. On one side, you
4:37
Speaker 2: have Mob Piru, a Blood's affiliated street gang that had
4:40
Speaker 2: become deeply intertwined with Death Row Records.
4:43
Speaker 1: The label Souge Knight ran right, Souge Knight.
4:45
Speaker 2: The CEO of Death Row, was known to employ gang
4:48
Speaker 2: members for protection, creating this hybrid of a multi million
4:51
Speaker 2: dollar music label and a street syndicate.
4:53
Speaker 1: And on the other side, on the other.
4:55
Speaker 2: Side, you have the South Side Compton Crips that is
4:57
Speaker 2: Dwayne Davis's gang. But what's crucial is how Davis's crew
5:01
Speaker 2: also became corporatized. The prosecution laid out how Davis's affiliations
5:05
Speaker 2: tied him directly to Sean Puffy Comb's and Bad Boy Entertainment,
5:09
Speaker 2: which was obviously based in New.
5:10
Speaker 1: York, Ah the legendary East Coast versus West Coast beef.
5:13
Speaker 1: But how did that actually function on a mechanical level?
5:16
Speaker 1: Was Bad Boy literally like hiring the south Side Compton Cryps.
5:20
Speaker 2: According to the prosecution, it functioned as an unbonded, unofficial
5:24
Speaker 2: security apparatus. Shawn Combs and his artists were incredibly wealthy,
5:28
Speaker 2: high profile targets when they came to the West Coast.
5:31
Speaker 2: Sure they were well aware of the hostility from Death
5:33
Speaker 2: Row and Mob Pierro. So the prosecution claims Dwayne Davis
5:37
Speaker 2: stepped up to act as that unofficial security detail to
5:40
Speaker 2: ensure Bad Boy artists had saved passage in California. Wow,
5:44
Speaker 2: This corporate proxy war drastically escalated the existing street tensions
5:48
Speaker 2: between Mob Pieru and the South Side Compton Cryps, culminating
5:52
Speaker 2: in several violent clashes, including a major boiling point at
5:55
Speaker 2: the Lakewood Mall in the summer of nineteen ninety six.
5:58
Speaker 1: So, when the prosecution plays that grainy surveillance video of
6:02
Speaker 1: Orlando Anderson getting stomped at the MGM Grand. They are
6:05
Speaker 1: doing some very heavy lifting. They are just showing a fight.
6:08
Speaker 1: They are establishing a motive that ties the street level
6:11
Speaker 1: gang rules to the corporate music beef.
6:14
Speaker 2: A new past strategy. Here is incredibly sharp courtroom psychology.
6:19
Speaker 2: By leading with the video of the beating, she bypasses
6:22
Speaker 2: the jury's analytical brain and goes straight for their emotional core.
6:26
Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
6:27
Speaker 2: She anchors the subsequent murder in a reality that anyone
6:31
Speaker 2: can understand. A beloved family member was publicly humiliated and
6:34
Speaker 2: physically assaulted on.
6:36
Speaker 1: Camera, right, And the prosecution leans heavily on this concept
6:39
Speaker 1: of gang culture retaliation. They are arguing that in Dwayne
6:43
Speaker 1: Davis's ecosystem, a beating like that cannot just be written off.
6:46
Speaker 1: You don't call the police exactly. You have to respond
6:49
Speaker 1: or you lose all authority on the street. It's like
6:50
Speaker 1: a powder keg in a match. The broader East Coast
6:53
Speaker 1: and West Coast beef is the powder keg that took
6:55
Speaker 1: months to build. But the beating at the MGM Grand
6:58
Speaker 1: that was the match.
7:00
Speaker 2: But notice how the prosecution frames it. They don't just
7:03
Speaker 2: call it cold calculated gang protocol. They use the phrase
7:07
Speaker 2: visceral anger. They argue that this wasn't just business, it
7:10
Speaker 2: was a deeply emotional fury that sees Davis.
7:13
Speaker 1: Visceral anger that supposedly lasted for the two and a
7:16
Speaker 1: half hours between the casino beating and the drive by shooting.
7:19
Speaker 1: And honestly, the wildest part of the prosecution's opening statement
7:23
Speaker 1: is that they claim that same visceral anger is still
7:25
Speaker 1: evident twenty eight years later, whenever Davis talks about it
7:28
Speaker 1: in interviews.
7:29
Speaker 2: We really have to consider the mechanical function of that
7:32
Speaker 2: MGM surveillance video in the context of this specific trial.
7:37
Speaker 2: In a case built on decades old, fading memories, where
7:40
Speaker 2: witnesses have died or changed their stories, and where physical
7:43
Speaker 2: evidence is essentially non existent, that video is a prosecution's
7:47
Speaker 2: only objective anchor, the.
7:48
Speaker 1: One thing that is absolutely undeniable.
7:50
Speaker 2: It is the one thing no defense attorney can cross
7:52
Speaker 2: examine or claim is hearsay.
7:55
Speaker 1: Because seeing that violence on tape has to psychologically prime
7:58
Speaker 1: the jury. It makes the execution's narrative of immediate retaliation
8:02
Speaker 1: feel inevitable. You see a guy get jumped by a
8:04
Speaker 1: dozen guys and you instantly think, Okay, his people are
8:07
Speaker 1: going to come back for blood.
8:09
Speaker 2: It completely grounds the abstract sociological concept of gang retaliation
8:13
Speaker 2: into a tangible human reaction. So the prosecution successfully establishes
8:18
Speaker 2: the motive of violent public disrespect. But here is the
8:23
Speaker 2: massive hurdle. Binu Pal has to clear. How does she
8:26
Speaker 2: connect Wayne Davis to the actual murder when she explicitly
8:29
Speaker 2: admits in her opening statement that Davis did not pull
8:32
Speaker 2: the trigger?
8:32
Speaker 1: Right, this is huge. The prosecution is very clear Dwayne
8:35
Speaker 1: Davis did not shoot to Pakshakur, but he is facing
8:38
Speaker 1: life in prison because he is being charged with organizing
8:40
Speaker 1: and facilitating the hit. And when we look at how
8:43
Speaker 1: the prosecution knows the details of that organization, well, it
8:46
Speaker 1: all comes from Davis himself.
8:48
Speaker 2: This is where the trial completely deviates from the norm.
8:51
Speaker 2: The prosecution's roadmap for the murder is essentially ghost written
8:54
Speaker 2: by the defendant. According to Davis's own accounts, he procured
8:58
Speaker 2: the firearm used in the show shooting from a man
9:01
Speaker 2: named Eric zip Martin, who happened to be the bad
9:03
Speaker 2: Boy entertainment connection from New York.
9:06
Speaker 1: Wait, let's slow down on that detail. The guy providing
9:08
Speaker 1: security for the East Coast label gets the murder weapon
9:12
Speaker 1: from an East Coast leadal associate.
9:13
Speaker 2: Yes, the prosecution uses Davis's words to outline how after
9:18
Speaker 2: securing the weapon from Zip Martin, Davis organized a hunting party.
9:22
Speaker 2: He orchestrated two vehicles to patrol the Las Vegas Strip
9:26
Speaker 2: and head toward Club six sixty two, where they knew
9:28
Speaker 2: Suge Night and Tupac were heading.
9:30
Speaker 1: And they have a seating chart right.
9:32
Speaker 2: Yes, the prosecution even presents a highly specific seating chart
9:36
Speaker 2: for the primary suspect vehicle, a white Cadillac.
9:39
Speaker 1: And again, they have this seating chart because Davis literally
9:41
Speaker 1: provided it to them.
9:43
Speaker 2: Let's look at the mechanics of that vehicle it's described
9:45
Speaker 2: by Davis. You have Terence T. Brown driving, Sitting behind
9:50
Speaker 2: him on the rear driver's side is DeAndre Big Dray Smith.
9:54
Speaker 2: In the rear passenger seat is Orlando Baby Lane Anderson,
9:58
Speaker 2: the nephew who had just been beaten at the MBA,
10:00
Speaker 2: and Davis sitting in the front passenger seat. Commanding the
10:04
Speaker 2: vehicle is the defendant, Dwayne Davis.
10:07
Speaker 1: The timeline binu Pal lays out from there is incredibly cinematic,
10:10
Speaker 1: and it's sourced entirely from Davis's own retellings. They are
10:14
Speaker 1: prowling the strip, they actually spot the BMW because they
10:17
Speaker 1: hear fans shouting Tupac's name. They execute a U turn
10:21
Speaker 1: and heavy strip traffic and pull up alongside sug Knight's car.
10:24
Speaker 2: And this is where Davis says he handed the gun,
10:27
Speaker 2: the one from Zip Martin, into the back seat handoff.
10:29
Speaker 2: The handoff is a critical mechanical detail in the prosecution's
10:32
Speaker 2: theory of facilitation. Davis claims he passed the weapon back
10:36
Speaker 2: and originally DeAndrea big Drey Smith refused to take it,
10:40
Speaker 2: so Orlando Anderson takes the weapon and fires the fatal
10:42
Speaker 2: shots into the BMW.
10:44
Speaker 1: And Davis doesn't just stop at the logistics. He adds
10:47
Speaker 1: this incredibly chilling, boastful piece of commentary. He publicly stated
10:53
Speaker 1: that if Tupac and Suge had been on his side
10:55
Speaker 1: of the car, he wouldn't have handed the gun back.
10:58
Speaker 1: He would have shot them himself.
11:00
Speaker 2: But what is truly staggering from a legal perspective is
11:03
Speaker 2: the sheer volume of these confessions. The prosecution's case isn't
11:07
Speaker 2: built on one slip of the tongue in an interrogation room.
11:11
Speaker 2: It is a marathon of davis self reporting his own
11:14
Speaker 2: guilt across multiple platforms, jurisdictions, and decades. To understand how
11:19
Speaker 2: we got here, we have to synthesize the timeline of
11:22
Speaker 2: these confessions because the legal context of each admission changes drastically.
11:26
Speaker 1: Okay, break that timeline down for us, because I know
11:28
Speaker 1: there are different levels of legal protection at play here.
11:31
Speaker 2: It starts in two thousand and eight. Davis is sitting
11:33
Speaker 2: in a room with a federal task force. Now, the
11:35
Speaker 2: crucial context here is that this task force was not
11:38
Speaker 2: investigating the murder of Tupac Shakur. They were a federal
11:41
Speaker 2: unit investigating the murder of a notorious big Christopher Wallace,
11:45
Speaker 2: who was killed in Los Angeles six months after Tupac.
11:48
Speaker 1: So why is Davis talking to them about Tupac?
11:50
Speaker 2: Because Davis was caught in a massive narcotics trafficking sting.
11:54
Speaker 2: He was facing potentially the rest of his life in
11:57
Speaker 2: federal prison for drugs.
11:59
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's cornered.
12:00
Speaker 2: Exactly, he engages in what is called a profit session.
12:03
Speaker 1: Hold on what exactly is a profer session? How does
12:06
Speaker 1: that work legally? Because it sounds like he just confessed
12:09
Speaker 1: to a murder to get out of a drug charge.
12:11
Speaker 1: Which seems like a terrible trade.
12:13
Speaker 2: A profit session, sometimes called a queen for a day agreement,
12:17
Speaker 2: is a highly specific legal mechanism. Imagine you're facing severe charges.
12:23
Speaker 2: Your defense attorney goes to the federal prosecutors and says,
12:26
Speaker 2: my client has information about a much bigger fish or
12:29
Speaker 2: a much bigger case, but he won't talk unless you
12:32
Speaker 2: guarantee you won't use his words against it. The feds agree,
12:36
Speaker 2: and you sit down in a room, usually with agents
12:38
Speaker 2: and attorneys. You sign an agreement that essentially states, nothing
12:41
Speaker 2: I say in this room today can be used against
12:43
Speaker 2: me in the government's direct case against me.
12:46
Speaker 1: It's an immunity bubble.
12:47
Speaker 2: A temporary conditional immunity bubble. It allows law enforcement to
12:51
Speaker 2: peek at the cards you are holding without officially playing them.
12:54
Speaker 2: In this two thousand and eight proffer, Davis claims he
12:57
Speaker 2: doesn't know who killed Biggie, but to save himself from
13:00
Speaker 2: the drug charges, he offers up the entire architectural blueprint
13:03
Speaker 2: of the two Pac murder. That is the first major
13:06
Speaker 2: recorded admission.
13:07
Speaker 1: But that was a protected federal bubble in two thousand
13:10
Speaker 1: and eight. If the prosecution is using his words now,
13:13
Speaker 1: he must have stepped outside that bubble.
13:15
Speaker 2: He completely obliterated the bubble. In two thousand and nine,
13:18
Speaker 2: he sits down for an interview with Las Vegas Metropolitan
13:22
Speaker 2: Police Department Detective Dan Long. This is a local jurisdiction
13:25
Speaker 2: investigating the actual Tupac homicide to no bubble. No in
13:29
Speaker 2: this room. There is no federal profit agreement protecting him.
13:33
Speaker 2: He is slightly more guarded, but he still admits to
13:35
Speaker 2: the core mechanics. He was the boss. You procured the gun.
13:38
Speaker 2: He was in the front seat of the Cadillac, and
13:40
Speaker 2: he handed the weapon to the backseat.
13:41
Speaker 1: And if confessing to a Vegas homicide detective wasn't enough,
13:44
Speaker 1: we jumped to twenty seventeen. He decides to bypass law
13:48
Speaker 1: enforcement entirely and goes straight to the consumer. He sits
13:52
Speaker 1: down for an on camera interview in a BET documentary
13:55
Speaker 1: called Death Row Chronicles. He is literally telling the world
13:59
Speaker 1: on cable television that he orchestrated the murder, and.
14:01
Speaker 2: The crescendo of this timeline happens. In twenty nineteen, he
14:05
Speaker 2: publishes a physical book, a memoir that heavily details his
14:09
Speaker 2: role in the Gang Wars and the Tupac murder interwoven
14:12
Speaker 2: with what the prosecution aptly describes as a massive amount
14:16
Speaker 2: of self aggrandizement.
14:18
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop you here. This is the
14:19
Speaker 1: part that makes my brain just heard, and I know
14:21
Speaker 1: anyone listening is shouting this exact same question at whatever
14:24
Speaker 1: device they're listening on.
14:25
Speaker 2: What's question.
14:25
Speaker 1: If he confessed in two thousand and eight to federal agents,
14:28
Speaker 1: and he confessed again in two thousand and nine to
14:30
Speaker 1: local Vegas cops without an immunity agreement, why on earth
14:33
Speaker 1: did it take until twenty twenty three for him to
14:35
Speaker 1: be indicted. How does a confession to the murder of
14:38
Speaker 1: one of the most famous cultural figures of the twentieth
14:40
Speaker 1: century just sit in a filing cabinet for over a decade.
14:43
Speaker 2: That is the gaping hole in the timeline and is
14:46
Speaker 2: the exact vulnerability the defense is using to build their
14:49
Speaker 2: entire counter narrative. But before we look at the defensive strategy,
14:53
Speaker 2: we have to look at the prosecution's theory of why
14:55
Speaker 2: he confessed so many times? Right, the prosecution argues that
14:59
Speaker 2: you don't hold on to that level of granular detail
15:01
Speaker 2: and that level of visceral anger for decades to tell
15:04
Speaker 2: a fabricated story. They argue it's the truth.
15:07
Speaker 1: Bubbling up, But you also have to factor in his ego.
15:10
Speaker 1: Right when you watch that twenty seventeen BET documentary, Davis
15:14
Speaker 1: explicitly says on camera that reporters, magazine writers and producers
15:18
Speaker 1: had been relentlessly pursuing him for twenty years. He was
15:23
Speaker 1: acutely aware that he held the key to a massive
15:26
Speaker 1: cultural obsession.
15:27
Speaker 2: That is the psychological core of the prosecution's argument. They
15:31
Speaker 2: are pointing to a phenomenon we rarely see articulated so
15:34
Speaker 2: clearly in court. The sheer a lure of being the
15:36
Speaker 2: last man alive from that white Cadillac. Davis watched decades
15:40
Speaker 2: of documentaries theorize about what happened. He watched other people
15:43
Speaker 2: monetize the mystery is a temptation to claim the spotlight,
15:47
Speaker 2: to assert absolute authority over a piece of hip hop
15:50
Speaker 2: history so intoxicating that a person would voluntarily incriminate themselves
15:55
Speaker 2: just to own the narrative. The prosecution says, yes, is
15:59
Speaker 2: Hubris drove him to confess the truth.
16:01
Speaker 1: It's a tragic irony. The prosecution paints a picture of
16:05
Speaker 1: a criminal mastermind who successfully got away with it, only
16:08
Speaker 1: to brag his way into a prison cell. But when
16:11
Speaker 1: defense attorney Michael Samp stands up for his opening statement,
16:14
Speaker 1: he looks at those exact same two thousand and eight transcripts,
16:16
Speaker 1: those exact same TV interviews, in that exact same book,
16:19
Speaker 1: and he sees an entirely different reality.
16:21
Speaker 2: He definitely does.
16:22
Speaker 1: He doesn't see a mastermind. He sees a desperate man
16:25
Speaker 1: spinning fairy tales for cash.
16:27
Speaker 2: Sam hinges the defense's entire counter narrative on a direct
16:30
Speaker 2: challenge to the jury decide if this case is fact
16:33
Speaker 2: or fiction. He builds this on three very aggressive pillars,
16:37
Speaker 2: a total lack of physical evidence, shockingly sloppy institutional polacework,
16:41
Speaker 2: and a defendant who is a notoriously unreliable narrator of
16:44
Speaker 2: his own life.
16:45
Speaker 1: Let's dig into that first pillar, the lack of physical evidence.
16:49
Speaker 1: Samp immediately points out that, despite almost thirty years of investigation,
16:53
Speaker 1: the prosecution doesn't possess the murder weapon, but they do
16:56
Speaker 1: have a completely bizarre story about a gun that perfectly
16:59
Speaker 1: illustrates the defense's point.
17:01
Speaker 2: The defense highlights a deeply embarrassing interdepartmental fiasco. According to Samp,
17:08
Speaker 2: at one point during the investigation, the Los Angeles Police
17:11
Speaker 2: apartment reached out to Las Vegas Detective Dan Long. The
17:14
Speaker 2: LAPD claimed they had recovered the actual firearm used to
17:17
Speaker 2: kill Tupac.
17:18
Speaker 1: So Detective Long travels from Vegas to La takes custody
17:22
Speaker 1: of the weapon, brings it back to Nevada and runs
17:24
Speaker 1: the ballistics and it's not a match. It's completely the
17:27
Speaker 1: wrong gun.
17:28
Speaker 2: But the punchline, according to the defense, is that the
17:30
Speaker 2: LAPD allegedly told Detective Long afterward, oh, we knew that,
17:33
Speaker 2: we just gave you a fake gun to test you out.
17:35
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, stop. Are you seriously saying that the
17:37
Speaker 1: LAPD purposefully handed over a fake murder weapon to a
17:41
Speaker 1: neighboring jurisdiction during the most famous unsolved homicide investigation of
17:44
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. How is that even remotely professional, let
17:47
Speaker 1: alone legal.
17:48
Speaker 2: It sounds absurd, But you have to understand the historical
17:51
Speaker 2: context of law enforcement in the late nineteen nineties and
17:54
Speaker 2: early two thousands to see why the defense is weaponizing
17:57
Speaker 2: this anecdote. Law enforcement and sees often operated in extreme silos. Okay,
18:03
Speaker 2: you had the LAPD dealing with the massive fallout of
18:05
Speaker 2: the rampart scandal, dealing with intense scrutiny over their gang units.
18:09
Speaker 2: You had LVMPD dealing with a billion dollar tourism industry
18:13
Speaker 2: that demanded Vegas appear safe. These departments operated like rival corporations,
18:18
Speaker 2: refusing to share source code.
18:20
Speaker 1: That makes a sick kind of sense.
18:22
Speaker 2: By bringing this up, the defense isn't just telling a
18:24
Speaker 2: funny story. They are planting a seed in the jury's
18:27
Speaker 2: mind that these investigations were driven by EO rivalry and
18:30
Speaker 2: dysfunction rather than a search for the truth.
18:33
Speaker 1: And that transitions perfectly into their second pillar, sloppy investigation
18:37
Speaker 1: and a total lack of verification. The defense points out
18:39
Speaker 1: that the FBI and agency stamp sarcastically refers to as
18:43
Speaker 1: the gold standard of investigation, never even bothered to verify
18:46
Speaker 1: the claims Davis made in that two thousand and eight
18:48
Speaker 1: Federal Profit session.
18:50
Speaker 2: This is a devastating critique of the investigative mechanics. Remember
18:53
Speaker 2: that seating chart Davis provided in two thousand and eight.
18:56
Speaker 2: He named three other men in that cadillac. The defense
18:59
Speaker 2: points out a glare ring fact to the jury. At
19:01
Speaker 2: the time of that two thousand and eight confession, one
19:04
Speaker 2: of those passengers, Terence T. Brown, was still alive.
19:07
Speaker 1: Wait, a man confesses to orchestrating a murder, names a
19:11
Speaker 1: living accomplice who was sitting two feet away from him
19:14
Speaker 1: in the car, and law enforcement just doesn't go talk
19:17
Speaker 1: to the accomplice.
19:18
Speaker 2: The defense claims there is no record of law enforcement
19:21
Speaker 2: ever interviewing that surviving individual to corroborate Davis's story. They
19:25
Speaker 2: just took Davis's word for it and filed it away.
19:28
Speaker 1: That is just mind boggling. Gives so much ammunition to
19:30
Speaker 1: the defense, and they aim all of that ammunition directly
19:34
Speaker 1: at a retired Las Vegas police detective named Clifford Mock,
19:37
Speaker 1: who took over the cold case years later in twenty seventeen.
19:41
Speaker 2: The attack on detective Mock is where the defense explains
19:43
Speaker 2: exactly how self published memoir ended up acting as a
19:46
Speaker 2: legal indictment. The defense explains to the jury that detective
19:50
Speaker 2: Mock utilized a secret grand jury proceeding to get the
19:53
Speaker 2: charges against Davis.
19:54
Speaker 1: Can you explain the mechanics of a grand jury here?
19:57
Speaker 1: Because I think people hear a jury and they picture
20:00
Speaker 1: the sixteen people sitting in the courtroom right now. But
20:02
Speaker 1: a grand jury is a completely different beast.
20:06
Speaker 2: It is entirely different A trial jury decides guilt or
20:09
Speaker 2: innocence in an open courtroom where both sides fight it out.
20:13
Speaker 2: A grand jury is an artifact of the legal system
20:16
Speaker 2: used to decide if there is merely enough evidence to
20:18
Speaker 2: bring a charge in the first place. But the catch
20:21
Speaker 2: is it is completely one sided. It is an ex
20:24
Speaker 2: PARTI proceeding.
20:25
Speaker 1: No defense attorney exactly.
20:27
Speaker 2: There is no judge present. The defense attorney's legally barred
20:29
Speaker 2: from entering the room. It is just the prosecutor, a
20:32
Speaker 2: panel of citizens, and the prosecutor's witnesses.
20:35
Speaker 1: It's essentially a closed door pitch meeting for the prosecution.
20:38
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. There is an
20:40
Speaker 2: old legal saying that a prosecutor could get a grand
20:43
Speaker 2: jury to indict a ham Sandwich because there is absolutely
20:46
Speaker 2: no adversarial pushback. So, according to defense attorney Samp, detective
20:51
Speaker 2: Mock goes into this secret grand jury room, gets sworn
20:54
Speaker 2: in under oath, and instead of presenting physical evidence or
20:57
Speaker 2: corroborating witness statements, he essentially just reads pages from Dwayne
21:01
Speaker 2: Davis's twenty nineteen book into the official legal record.
21:04
Speaker 1: The defense said he read it as if it's the
21:07
Speaker 1: gospel truth laundering a piece of commercial fiction through a
21:10
Speaker 1: secret legal process to make it look like verified evidence.
21:14
Speaker 1: And then Sam drops the most shocking claim of all.
21:17
Speaker 1: He tells the jury that from the time Mack took
21:18
Speaker 1: over the case in twenty seventeen all the way until
21:21
Speaker 1: he retired in twenty twenty three, the detective didn't write
21:24
Speaker 1: a single police report. Six years on the biggest cold
21:27
Speaker 1: case in the city, and not one official report.
21:30
Speaker 2: If that is true, it is an astonishing deviation from
21:33
Speaker 2: basic police procedure. A police report is the fundamental atomic
21:38
Speaker 2: unit of an investigation. It creates accountability and a timeline.
21:42
Speaker 2: The absence of those reports allows the defense to execute
21:46
Speaker 2: a textbook psychological tactic known as the empty chair defense,
21:50
Speaker 2: combined with an aggressive attack on the state's burden of proof.
21:54
Speaker 1: How do you actually execute an empty chair defense without
21:57
Speaker 1: just sounding like a desperate conspiracy theorist to the jury.
22:00
Speaker 2: You don't make up a new killer. You just point
22:03
Speaker 2: to the incompetence of the people trying to fill the chair.
22:06
Speaker 2: The defense isn't taking on the burden of proving who
22:08
Speaker 2: actually did kill Tupac Shakur. They are pointing to the
22:11
Speaker 2: empty chair at the defense table, where the real mastermind
22:14
Speaker 2: should be sitting right, And they spent all their energy
22:17
Speaker 2: proving that the police were so lazy, so blinded by
22:19
Speaker 2: interdepartmental rivalry, and so desperate to close a thirty year
22:22
Speaker 2: old case that they just grabbed the loudest guy in
22:24
Speaker 2: the room, joined Davis, and shoved him into the chair.
22:28
Speaker 2: They put the investigation itself on trial.
22:30
Speaker 1: And this brilliantly answers the timeline question we had earlier.
22:34
Speaker 1: Why wasn't Davis charged in two thousand and eight or
22:36
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine after confessing to the FEDS and
22:39
Speaker 1: Vegas cops. The defense argues it wasn't because the DA
22:42
Speaker 1: didn't care about justice for Tupac. They argue the DA
22:45
Speaker 1: didn't charge Davis back then because competent prosecutors looked into
22:48
Speaker 1: his story, realized it was physically impossible to verify, and
22:52
Speaker 1: concluded that Davis was just full of crap.
22:54
Speaker 2: It forces the jury to weigh two highly uncomfortable probabilities.
22:59
Speaker 2: Is it more likely that a man fabricated a confession
23:01
Speaker 2: to a legendary murder for fame and money in an
23:05
Speaker 2: era obsessed with true crime media, Or is it more
23:07
Speaker 2: likely that multiple massively funded law enforcement agencies bungled a
23:11
Speaker 2: taped confession for fifteen years.
23:14
Speaker 1: It does an immense gamble for a defense strategy. They
23:16
Speaker 1: are asking the jury to believe that Davis basically framed
23:19
Speaker 1: himself for murder just to get a book deal. But
23:21
Speaker 1: the opening statements have drawn the battle lines. The prosecution
23:23
Speaker 1: says the book is a confession. The defense says the
23:26
Speaker 1: book is fiction. To figure out who is telling the truth,
23:28
Speaker 1: we have to look past the lawyers and focus on
23:31
Speaker 1: the people who are physically on the asphalt of the
23:33
Speaker 1: Las Vegas Strip that night in nineteen ninety six, which brings.
23:36
Speaker 2: Us to the first wave of witness testimony. The prosecution
23:39
Speaker 2: called a woman named Ingrid Stokes to the stand. She
23:42
Speaker 2: was a passenger in a convertible driving on this strip
23:45
Speaker 2: just moments before the shooting.
23:47
Speaker 1: Her testimony was fascinating because it provided this incredibly vivid,
23:52
Speaker 1: mundane snapshot right before the historical violence. She was in
23:56
Speaker 1: the front passenger seat, her friend Slaine was driving, and
23:59
Speaker 1: two other her friends, Lauren and Tanisha, were in the back.
24:02
Speaker 2: Stokes testified that her friend Lauren actually knew Souge night personally.
24:07
Speaker 2: When they saw Souge driving his plateless black BMW with
24:10
Speaker 2: Tupac in the passenger seat. They pulled up next to
24:13
Speaker 2: them in the heavy strip traffic just to say hello.
24:15
Speaker 1: She said. They were casually chatting, and Sooge invited their
24:18
Speaker 1: car to follow the BMW to Club six' sixty. Two
24:21
Speaker 1: but a mix of this casual celebrity, Encounter stokes noted
24:24
Speaker 1: a very, specific aggressive environmental. Detail while her friend was
24:29
Speaker 1: trying to maneuver their convertible to Follow, suge there was
24:32
Speaker 1: a car behind them acting highly.
24:33
Speaker 2: Erratically, Yes stokes specifically testified that a white four door
24:38
Speaker 2: car kept trying to aggressively get around, them cutting through
24:41
Speaker 2: traffic to the point where they almost.
24:42
Speaker 1: Collided which obviously is a massive win for the. Prosecution
24:46
Speaker 1: it physically places a white four door car matching the
24:50
Speaker 1: description of the Suspect cadillac aggressively hunting down THE bmw
24:54
Speaker 1: at the exact time and Place davis claimed they were doing.
24:56
Speaker 1: It but just when the prosecution's timeline looks, solid the
25:01
Speaker 1: defense steps up for cross examination and The jenga tower
25:03
Speaker 1: starts to.
25:04
Speaker 2: Wobble the defense Asks stokes very targeted questions about a
25:08
Speaker 2: seemingly minor Detail tupac's physical, demeanor in those final, moments.
25:13
Speaker 1: And this creates a massive structural contradiction in the. Narrative
25:17
Speaker 1: the defense Asks stokes If tupac was hanging out the
25:19
Speaker 1: window yelling to fans on the. Street stokes explicitly unequivocally denies.
25:24
Speaker 1: This she testifies that there were no fans around their.
25:27
Speaker 1: Cars she Says tupac was completely, relaxed sitting down in
25:30
Speaker 1: the passenger, seat just chilling and listening to.
25:32
Speaker 2: Music to understand why this, matters you have to look
25:35
Speaker 2: at the mechanics of cross. Examination the defense is Treating
25:38
Speaker 2: davis's twenty nineteen book like A jenga. Tower in his
25:41
Speaker 2: self published, Book davis explicitly claimed that his crew spotted
25:45
Speaker 2: THE bmw Because tupac was hanging out the window like
25:48
Speaker 2: he was in a parade with girls hollering his name
25:50
Speaker 2: all over the. Street.
25:51
Speaker 1: Ah, so if the defense can get an eyewitness to
25:54
Speaker 1: pull out this one Specific jenga, block the detail about
25:57
Speaker 1: the parade like atmosphere And tupac hanging out the, window
26:00
Speaker 1: they are hoping the jury watches the entire structure of
26:03
Speaker 1: the confession.
26:03
Speaker 2: Collapse it's a brilliant tactical. Maneuver the defense is subtly
26:07
Speaker 2: communicating to the. Jury, look this innocent, bystander who is
26:11
Speaker 2: two feet, away Says tupac was seated and. Relaxed the
26:15
Speaker 2: defendant's book Claims tupac was hanging out the window like
26:17
Speaker 2: a parade. Float if the book is blatantly lying about the,
26:20
Speaker 2: easiest most visible detail to, verify how can you trust
26:23
Speaker 2: it about who handed a gun to whom in the.
26:25
Speaker 1: Dark it perfectly illustrates how a single witness can serve
26:29
Speaker 1: both masters in a. Courtroom for the, Prosecution stokes corroborates
26:33
Speaker 1: the presence of the white threat. Vehicle for the, defense
26:36
Speaker 1: she severely Damages Dwayne davis's credibility as a reliable narrator
26:39
Speaker 1: of his own, story supporting their core thesis that the
26:42
Speaker 1: book is dramatic fiction meant to sell, copies not a
26:46
Speaker 1: factual recounting of a.
26:47
Speaker 2: Murder let's look at the other crucial witness from day,
26:50
Speaker 2: one because his testimony introduces the most profound paradox of
26:54
Speaker 2: this entire. Case Gary dale was A Las Vegas Metropolitan
26:58
Speaker 2: Police department bike off sir working the strip that.
27:01
Speaker 1: Night Officer dale actually interacted with the victims twice that.
27:04
Speaker 1: Night earlier in the, evening completely unaware of the looming,
27:08
Speaker 1: violence he pulled over Sushe knight And tupac because their
27:12
Speaker 1: BLACK bmw didn't have license, plates.
27:15
Speaker 2: And then shortly after that traffic, Stop dale hears the
27:17
Speaker 2: radio calls for shots. Fired he pedals Towards harmon and
27:20
Speaker 2: the boulevard and finds that exact same PLAYLIST bmw it
27:24
Speaker 2: had violently run up onto the median in the middle
27:26
Speaker 2: of the.
27:27
Speaker 1: Road the Scene dale describes to the jury as sheer.
27:30
Speaker 1: Chaos Sous knight has a head. Wound he is bleeding,
27:32
Speaker 1: profusely but he is pacing around outside the. Vehicle Tupac
27:36
Speaker 1: shakur is critically injured and is actively being extracted from
27:39
Speaker 1: the passenger seat BY ems. Personnel dale also made a
27:42
Speaker 1: note of a bizarre. Detail the, massive heavy gold Chain
27:46
Speaker 1: tupac had been wearing during the earlier traffic stop was now.
27:48
Speaker 2: Missing but the legal and historical weight Of dale's testimony
27:52
Speaker 2: doesn't come from the physical. Scene it comes from his
27:55
Speaker 2: brief verbal interaction With tupac on the. Pavement dale realizes
28:00
Speaker 2: this is a targeted drive, by and he has the
28:02
Speaker 2: primary victim right in front of. Him, Conscious dale testifies
28:06
Speaker 2: that he leaned in and tried to convince a Bleeding
28:08
Speaker 2: tupac to name his, assailants tell the police who did?
28:11
Speaker 1: This And tupac's response to the police officer is just.
28:14
Speaker 1: Chilling according To, Dale tupac looks at him and, says,
28:17
Speaker 1: no we'll take care of.
28:18
Speaker 2: It let's deeply analyze the mechanics of that, phrase we'll
28:21
Speaker 2: take care of. It tupac's absolute refusal to cooperate with
28:24
Speaker 2: law enforcement in his dying moments perfectly tragically encapsulates the
28:28
Speaker 2: exact street code the prosecution outline in their opening.
28:31
Speaker 1: Statement it proves that the gang Ecosystem binupaw was lecturing
28:35
Speaker 1: about wasn't just sociological. Theory it was an, active binding
28:38
Speaker 1: contract that dictated behavior in real, time even bleeding on the.
28:42
Speaker 1: Pavement the code superseded the.
28:44
Speaker 2: Law it validates the prosecution's claim that in the world
28:47
Speaker 2: of Mob peru and The Southside Compton, cribs calling the
28:50
Speaker 2: police is viewed as a fundamental violation of, order retaliation
28:55
Speaker 2: is the only recognized valid form of. Justice tupac's final
28:59
Speaker 2: words to a police officer confirmed the existence of the
29:02
Speaker 2: very ecosystem that the prosecution claims Motivated Dwayne davis to organize.
29:06
Speaker 1: The, hit but when you really sit with, it the
29:08
Speaker 1: tragic irony is. Overwhelming tupac's absolute adherence to that, code
29:13
Speaker 1: his refusal to let the legal justice system punish his,
29:16
Speaker 1: killers was a fatal error for historical. Truth by refusing
29:19
Speaker 1: to speak To Officer, Dale tupac inadvertently slammed the door
29:23
Speaker 1: on the investigation in its first five, minutes setting the
29:25
Speaker 1: stage for a thirty year data.
29:27
Speaker 2: Bottleneck he created a complete informational, vacuum and we have
29:30
Speaker 2: to recognize what happens when a vacuum exists around a highly,
29:33
Speaker 2: lucrative culturally massive. Event true crime media and the public
29:37
Speaker 2: of horror. Mystery that vacuum created an immense market demand
29:40
Speaker 2: for a, narrative and.
29:42
Speaker 1: That demand is exactly What Dwayne davis tapped. Into we
29:45
Speaker 1: also have to acknowledge the bizarre whiplash experienced by people
29:48
Speaker 1: Like Ingrid, stokes she talked about the aftermath of the.
29:51
Speaker 1: Shooting one, minute she and her friends are innocent tourists
29:54
Speaker 1: chatting with a global superstar in. Traffic the next, minute
29:58
Speaker 1: they are being treated aggressively by the, police forced to
30:01
Speaker 1: sit on the sidewalk like suspects while traffic just continues
30:04
Speaker 1: to roll.
30:05
Speaker 2: By her experience highlights the incredibly, chaotic, disorganized and flawed
30:10
Speaker 2: reality of an active crime. Scene it stands in stark
30:14
Speaker 2: contrast to the neat, chronological engineered narratives that both the
30:18
Speaker 2: prosecution and the defense are trying to build in the.
30:20
Speaker 2: Courtroom it subtly reminds the jury that memory and police
30:24
Speaker 2: work in the heat of a crisis are inherently.
30:26
Speaker 1: Messy As day one of this deeply historic trial, concludes
30:30
Speaker 1: we are left looking at two diametrically opposed portraits.
30:32
Speaker 2: Of justice to synthesize the massive amount of information we've. Unpacked,
30:36
Speaker 2: today you have a prosecution armed with a seemingly endless
30:40
Speaker 2: multi platform loop of a man claiming responsibility for a.
30:44
Speaker 2: Murder they are arguing that the sheer mechanics of his
30:47
Speaker 2: ego and his visceral anger forced him to publicly tell the.
30:51
Speaker 2: Truth on the other, side you have a defense pointing
30:54
Speaker 2: to a total lack of physical, proof missing, weapons unverified,
30:58
Speaker 2: accomplices and a great and jury process the rubber stamp
31:02
Speaker 2: to memoir. Right they're arguing that the confession is an
31:05
Speaker 2: economic illusion built to exploit the true.
31:07
Speaker 1: Crime, market and those sixteen people in the jury box
31:10
Speaker 1: are trapped right in the. Middle they have to decide
31:13
Speaker 1: if a man is going to die in prison based
31:14
Speaker 1: on a confession that might just be a grandiose, lie
31:17
Speaker 1: or a truth that was so badly botched by interdepartmental
31:20
Speaker 1: police rivalries that it can never be legally proven if.
31:23
Speaker 2: We step back and connect this to a broader, Context
31:26
Speaker 2: navigating this trial is essentially a masterclass in media. Literacy
31:30
Speaker 2: it forces us to ask some very uncomfortable questions about
31:33
Speaker 2: how modern history is.
31:34
Speaker 1: Recorded exactly in an era where literally anyone can self
31:37
Speaker 1: publish a, memoir go on a, podcast or star in
31:40
Speaker 1: a streaming. Documentary how do we mechanically distinguish between objective
31:45
Speaker 1: historical fact and personal monetized myth. Making how much of
31:49
Speaker 1: what we accept as the official historical record is just
31:53
Speaker 1: decided by whoever talked the loudest for the longest time
31:56
Speaker 1: into the biggest.
31:56
Speaker 2: Microphone the defense is banking heavily on the jury realizing
32:00
Speaker 2: that a story told repeatedly on television and printed in
32:03
Speaker 2: a paperback book does not automatically convert into evidence beyond
32:07
Speaker 2: a reasonable doubt.
32:08
Speaker 1: In a court of, law which brings us right back
32:10
Speaker 1: to where we. Started we entered this courtroom wanting the,
32:13
Speaker 1: clean undeniable facts of a forensic crime, scene but instead
32:17
Speaker 1: we are swimming in the murky waters of gang, justice huge,
32:21
Speaker 1: egos corporate music, proxies and thirty years of fading.
32:24
Speaker 2: MEMORIES i want to leave you guys with the haunting
32:26
Speaker 2: socio llegal paradox to. Consider it is something that isn't
32:29
Speaker 2: directly debated in the legal motions of the, courtroom but
32:32
Speaker 2: it acts as the gravitational pull for the entire. Trial
32:35
Speaker 2: Tubac shakur's silence on the, pavement his declaration that will
32:38
Speaker 2: take care of, it demanded that his parallel street world
32:41
Speaker 2: handle the, justice but that parallel system failed to solve the.
32:45
Speaker 2: Crime the legal system was locked, out which created a
32:48
Speaker 2: thirty year void of. Information is it possible That Dwayne,
32:52
Speaker 2: davis with his endless television, interviews his profer, sessions and
32:56
Speaker 2: his self published, books is now facing a life in
32:58
Speaker 2: a cage simply because his ego couldn't tolerate the silence
33:01
Speaker 2: That tupac.
33:02
Speaker 1: Demanded the streets may demand silence for, survival just as
33:05
Speaker 1: the prosecution noted when explaining gang. Culture but the ultimate
33:08
Speaker 1: tragedy of this trial might just be that the silence
33:11
Speaker 1: created a, market and it was the, irresistible undeniable urge
33:15
Speaker 1: to supply that market with a story that finally Brought
33:17
Speaker 1: Dwayne davis to. Justice keep that economic and ego driven
33:21
Speaker 1: tension in mind as you explore the rest of this
33:23
Speaker 1: history on your own