LAS VEGAS – In a high-profile case involving the 1996 murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur, the legal team representing the accused, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, is contesting the validity of a search warrant executed during nighttime hours. They argue this search was unlawful.

This week, Las Vegas attorneys Robert Draskovich and William Brown, who are defending Davis, submitted a motion challenging the nighttime search. Davis is facing charges in connection with the drive-by shooting that claimed the life of Shakur near the Las Vegas Strip.

The defense contends that the judge approved the search warrant based on a misleading characterization of Davis as a dangerous drug dealer. Such warrants, they argue, should only be issued in urgent situations where there is a risk of evidence being destroyed if law enforcement were to delay until daylight.

According to his attorneys, Davis, once a leader in a Southern California gang, had abandoned his involvement in drug trafficking back in 2008. Since then, he has been working in oil refinery inspections. At the time of the search, Davis was a 60-year-old retired cancer survivor, residing with his wife in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb, for nearly a decade. His attorneys emphasize that he is now a family man with adult children and grandchildren.

“The court was not presented with this information,” the defense motion states. “Consequently, the judge sanctioned a nighttime search based on a depiction of Davis that was far from accurate — essentially a factual error.” This argument forms a crucial part of Davis’s defense as his legal team seeks to have the evidence obtained during the search suppressed.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — which conducted the search and collected Davis’ electronic devices, “purported marijuana” and tubs of photographs — declined to comment Friday, citing the pending litigation. At the time of the search, police said executing the warrant under the cover of darkness would allow officers to surround and secure the residence, and that if Davis barricaded himself, the darkness would allow officers to evacuate the surrounding homes with the least exposure to residents.

Davis was arrested in September 2023. He pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and sought to be released since shortly after his arrest.

His attorneys claim Davis’ arrest stems from false public statements Davis had made in which he claimed to be present in the white Cadillac from which Shakur was shot. They say he has never offered details that would firmly corroborate his presence in the car, and that he benefited from saying he was present. He dodged drug charges by telling the story in a proffer agreement, and he has made money by repeating it in documentaries and his 2019 book, according to his attorneys.

He sought to dismiss his murder charges in the Nevada Supreme Court, but in November his petition was denied.

“Think of it this way: Shakur’s murder was essentially the entertainment world’s JFK assassination — endlessly dissected, mythologized, monetized — so it’s not hard to see why someone in Davis’s position might falsely place himself at the center of it all for personal gain,” his attorneys wrote.