Duane Davis, accused of Tupac murder, still not released | Courts

A judge on Tuesday continued to express doubts about the origin of the bail money for the man accused of orchestrating the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 61, who is charged with murder, is being held at the Clark County Detention Center on $750,000 bail.

In June, a man named Cash Jones testified that he paid $112,500 bail to get Davis out of jail.

But District Judge Carli Kierny said she wanted to make sure bail wasn't posted with proceeds from talks about Shakur's murder. She rejected Davis' bid to get out of jail.

Since then, Davis has continued to seek bail. His attorney, Carl Arnold, argued that a law prohibiting profiteering from a murder does not apply to Davis because he was not convicted of Shakur's murder.

The prosecutors disagreed.

Kierny denied the motion to reconsider bail on Tuesday, saying she remained skeptical of Davis' efforts to obtain bail.

“I feel like there are attempts to cover things up,” she said.

Kierny said she had previously submitted the application for reconsideration and then requested additional information and confirmation that Jones' money came from previous work. She received a letter from an entertainment company saying the $112,500 payment was in response to a June invoice. The letter was signed by a certain “Adam W.”

She had a paralegal answer the letter by phone or email.

“We never received an answer,” she said.

On August 2, Kierny received another letter, purporting to be from someone in the entertainment company, but with the name and address of a doctor's office misspelled. This letter had the same wording as the “Adam W.” letter.

Kierny's legal trainee eventually reached the woman whose name was on the letter, she said, but the woman claimed there was no “Adam W.” working at the company and said she did not know who sent the first letter.

The woman said a bail bond company called Smiley Bail Bonds told her what to write, Kierny said.

“I still have serious concerns about the information sent to me and have therefore not issued any further instructions,” Kierny said.

Arnold said he also understood that Smiley Face Bail Bonds wrote the letter. He suggested that autocorrect may have changed “Admin” to “Adam.” And he argued that there was nothing to suggest the money came from drugs, gangs or other nefarious sources.

He said no one wanted to be associated with donating money to bail out Davis. He claimed that he had received death threats since Jones's testimony in court.

Assistant District Attorney Binu Palal said he would advise the surety not to testify. It appears he submitted a false letter to the court, which is a crime, he said.

“This will not go uninvestigated,” he said.

Smiley Face Bail Bonds did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Davis' trial was originally scheduled for November 4, but was postponed by Kierny to March 17 at Arnold's request.

Contact Noble Brigham at [email protected]. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.