Tupac: Day 1 - Opening statements

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0:36Hello and welcome back to the Tupac Murder Trial from Fame and a Fire with me, Anushka Matanda-Dawati. Today it was opening statements. I'm here in the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas. We heard from the prosecution, we heard from the defense for the first time. Joining me now is the BBC's North America correspondent, who's usually based in Los Angeles, Shaima Khalil, but she lives with us today in Vegas. Hi, Shaima. Hey, Anushka. Great to be with you. I know you've been watching this story since it happened. Today we had opening statements, so this is where the theory for the prosecution and the defence are both presented to the jury.

1:04Let's start with the prosecution as the burden of proof is on them. What did they have to say? They were trying to convince the jury to take Keefe-Dee at his own words, that essentially Keefe-Dee, what he wrote, what he said in those public interviews is fact, not fiction. They were laying out the case against him. And one of the things that stood out to me when the prosecution was speaking to the jury is the sentence, you will learn from Kifidi himself. The prosecutor kept repeating that, didn't he? And I think what that tells us is that yet again, he's trying to push that point that much of the evidence, the bulk of the evidence against Kifidi is by Kifidi.

1:44in that memoir where he points out the fact that that attack, Tupac attack against Orlando Anderson, his nephew, was the thing that gave him the green light, as he said in the memoir, to do something. And then he describes being in that Cadillac, describes handing the gun. Now, Davis has said that this is fiction, that this is embellished. But I think the prosecution has once again laid out all the events of that night, told the jury that Keefe D had reason for revenge because of the attack against his nephew, and that he went out to mastermind the attack. But remember, they repeated that he did not pull the trigger.

2:20And I mean, we've heard it said that the star witness for the prosecution is Dwayne Keefe D. Davis. I think that's a fair statement to make now. Some of those quotes that he had, though, remarkably, you're going to hear this from Dwayne Davis himself. And then saying this is gang activity. so we knew that they were going to introduce that because there's a gang enhancement on the first-degree murder charge. They spoke about the culture of silence that came along with gang activity and they said the only person who has trouble staying silent is Keefe D. And then there was that almost montage of him speaking and it started in around 2018, 2017 when he was on BET.

2:55Just tell me a little bit about what we heard from Keefe D. Again, it's that sequence of events of what was going on. Keefe D saying essentially that Tupac attacked Orlando Anderson. He explained how he got the gun. And I found it really interesting as well, the laying out of the gang relations between the two big gangs and the relationship to Suge Knight for Death Row and P. Diddy with Bad Boy Records in New York and how that all that spills over in Los Angeles and then in Las Vegas. And again, Kifidi saying how he placed himself as well, like how he was in the passenger seat, how there were two men in the backseat, including his nephew, how he handed it to the backseat and how one passenger didn't want to fire.

3:42And then the other one was unsure. And so up until this moment, we're hearing a lot of details about what he what he did, where he got the gun from, where he was, where exactly he was in that Cadillac. And yet, for some reason, we're still not clear who pulled that trigger. And we can't let a mention of Diddy just go by without unpacking it. For those of you who've been with us since Diddy on trial, we did hear a little bit about Tupac's murder and Biggie Smalls. For those of you who watched the four-part Netflix series that 50 Cent did, there was some heavy insinuation that Diddy might have been involved.

4:13Now, when we get this connection, it comes through someone called Eric Zipmartin. Can you just unpack what he had to do with it and the role that Keefe D took on when it came to Diddy's protection? Eric Zip Martin is essentially the link between Keefe D and P. Diddy. Essentially, he's the one that introduces Keefe D and the crypts, the gang, to P. Diddy. P. Diddy at that time wanted security when he or members of his crew, members of his record label came to Los Angeles. And so he went to Zip essentially to say, well, can you introduce me to someone to provide security? And this is where Keefe D comes into the picture.

4:53But this is also where the Compton Crips come into the picture because they provided that security. And I think hereby is when you see gang relations spill over that feud that we keep talking about, the East Coast, West Coast feud, Suge Knight, Death Row, P. Diddy, Bad Boy. because it's essentially both of them using rival gangs for security that then spills over into violence, that then spills over into that beef, not just about music, but real-life gang violence on the streets that then takes us to that night. And we hear a lot from Keith Fede. So we said there's a BET interview that he did.

5:30There's other appearances he's done on podcasts and interviews. But of course, it is those police interviews. Now, if you haven't been listening to our previous episode, you might not know what we're talking about here. But in 2008, 2009 and in 1997, KVD spoke to law enforcement officers and was recorded. And some of those clips we heard today in opening statements, one of the striking to me, if they were on my side of the car, I'd have shot him myself. Was something that we heard? Yeah. That, again, not only places him in that scene, in that car, but it also in a way speaks of intent. He had intended to do that.

6:05He intended to get that gun, cause harm. And because Tupac wasn't on his side of the car, he didn't do it. And that's according to his words to the police. And so when we say that he masterminded this attack, that he planned this attack, it wasn't just that he got a gun and gave it to someone. He wanted retribution, as the prosecutor told the jury. He wanted revenge because he felt so disrespected that Tupac and his entourage from a rival gang have disrespected and attacked his nephew. And he wanted the retribution on the same night. They were very intentional about spotting the car, spotting the black BMW, making a U-turn, making sure that they got as close as they could to that car.

6:45But it just happened that Tupac wasn't on his side of the car. It was on the person in the backseat side of the car. So, again, it was a very intentional detail that he gave to the police that now we get to hear as well. And that speaks to the charges of being the architect of the crime and therefore criminally liable, although not firing the gun himself. it having a gang enhancement and it having a deadly weapons enhancement. Now, we heard, I just can't believe I'm saying this every time. We hear from the defendant saying, I would have done it myself, right? And we heard in those BET interviews, we heard in the podcast interviews that he'd done, but then they spoke to what you just established there, what the prosecution are trying to put forward as motive, right?

7:25That's right. But they bring that almost up to present day. They said into the 2020s, we have a recording of him on the phone in jail that shows the level of, quote, visceral hatred he had towards Tupac for what he did to Orlando Anderson? Because it wasn't just the fact that he did this to Orlando Anderson. There are so many layers to it. It's the fact that it's family, it's faction, it's territory. It is the fact that this happened on Keefe G's watch. It's the fact that it happened to a family member who was also a very prominent gang member of the Compton Crips. And so I think the level of anger doesn't really dissipate with time.

8:04If anything, as you said, we feel it deepen. But I also think it's the fact that he keeps talking about it, that he keeps giving those details, that he keeps saying that this happened because Tupac did what he did, because Tupac attacked my nephew, disrespected my nephew. And in a way, he disrespected family, but he also disrespected the gang that he belonged to and that's of course what the prosecution are putting forward is their theory i mean in that phone call is remarkable he keeps saying icon this guy isn't an icon he beat up on a kid he beat up on my nephew he calls him a bunch of slurs that we're not going to repeat i mean he's extremely angry and they're using that to say if he's that angry then how angry was he on the 7th of september 1996 so then how on earth does lead defense counsel for kifidi counter admissions from his own client.

8:58The whole strategy today that I've seen from the defense is don't believe my client. He's a liar. And we've actually just spoken to him before we did this right after the hearing finished. And I asked him, I said, so what you're trying to tell us is you're trying to convince the jury that your client is a liar. And he looked at me and he's like, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. He is a liar. But then you are faced with a conundrum. If you're telling people or if you're telling the jury don't believe him he's a liar why should we believe him when he says I'm innocent but he was also trying to poke holes into the investigation itself into the integrity of the investigation into the integrity of the evidence the fact that so much time has passed the fact that there's a lot of evidence that has disappeared poking holes into the detectives themselves and into the witnesses saying that they're unreliable there was one point where he looks at the jury And he says, so much time has passed.

9:52How are you going to establish a coherent narrative? It's been such a long time ago. How are you going to establish this for certain? And remember, all he needs to prove is reasonable doubt. And I mean, he goes some way in discrediting Dwayne Davis. He says in his book, his 2019 Compton Street Legend, he says he was second row at the MGM fight, dressed in his finest next to celebrities. And he says, there's no proof. There's no proof. He said, you know, he wrote this in the book. He placed himself a second row in that fight. He said that he was in Vegas, but there's no proof that he was in Vegas, except that he said that he was in Vegas and that he placed himself in Vegas at that night.

10:31He placed himself in that Cadillac. And I think to me, I cannot stress this enough, how extraordinary this is that we are facing an attorney who's essentially saying, do not believe anything that comes out of my client's mouth. And so we've got that half of it, which is don't believe my client. Even though he said this, wrote this, there's no material evidence that actually even places him in Vegas at the time. The other half of it was something we hadn't heard before. He introduced a narrative of corruption, particularly within the LAPD and the Compton Police Department. And let's speak about those detectives, because this was introduced by the defense in opening statements.

11:06They brought in three new characters, three detectives that have covered this case. The first one we heard from today was Becca. Now, from the defense's opening statements, they said some of them filed police reports. Some of that information went missing. There's rumors about it being stolen. There was a lack of security. They did not trust the LAPD. They did not trust the Compton Police Department. One of them that we're going to get into, which is Mog later on, didn't file police reports contemporary to what was going on. But we heard from Becker. A lot of what he was saying was we didn't feel like we could trust these guys.

11:35We were getting a lot of information out of Compton, but we didn't really want to work with them. I think that really spoke to the mood at that time. And I don't know how many people would remember this, but the LAPD's reputation at that time, especially in Compton, was quite infamous. A lot of people didn't want to seem like they were snitching. They didn't want to be seen as cooperating with the police. So again, one of the things that we've heard, and I'd heard this for years about the case going cold, about the police going nowhere with this, is their defense is, look, it's not us. Witnesses are being uncooperative, A, because they didn't know what they were going to do with it, what this evidence was going to be used for, if it was going to be used, but also, I think, community and gang repercussions.

12:19Yeah, absolutely. But also to hear from Becca saying he phrased it very diplomatically, but we had our concerns about their interview techniques. We didn't really want to work with the Compton Police Department. We didn't really want to cooperate with LAPD. Sometimes we would go to Los Angeles and not tell them that we were there. And something else that was interesting, we keep hearing about this has been 30 years. How are people supposed to remember? A pointed question from the defense being, Becca, have you been given the full police file that you filed to review? And he said no. No, no. And remember, he was saying, well, you know, to jog your memory, because this happened such a long time ago, did you have a chance to look at it?

12:54Did you have a chance to look at those lines? And he actually didn't have access to some basic information about the things that he had written at the time. And Becker also spoke on Reggie Wright Jr. saying, well, actually, we didn't interview him because his dad was Reggie Wright Sr., who was a lieutenant across gang activity for the Compton Police Department. And we were worried about that flow of information. That's quite an admission. It is quite an admission, but I also think it tells you that there was mistrust all around, that there was murkiness all around, that the flow of information did not go to the people that needed it at the time.

13:29So the defense, in their opening statements, they laid this out to the jury. They said, you've got some big challenges. You've got witnesses who can't really remember what happened. You've got a client, my client, who talks a load of crap, and you've got corruption. And these are the things that you're going to have to reckon with. And like you say, it's beyond a reasonable doubt. So it's a very, very high bar. So we had that kind of overview look, which you always get in opening statements. And then we really zoomed into the night on the 7th of September, 1996. Can you tell me a little bit about what we heard?

13:54I think for me, that was one of the most crucial and captivating moments because, you know, throughout the years, we hear a lot about that white Cadillac, the shots that were fired, that bullet written BMW. and then we say Tupac was shot four times. He died six days later. And I think today what we're getting is the crucial moments before and after. For me, I think the moment where the former police officer spoke about coming into contact with the black BMW or Suge Knight and Tupac were stopping them because he didn't like the look of the vehicle. It didn't have license plate. But then he said, you know, he had a conversation with them.

14:30It was cordial. And then he let them go off with a warning. And then, of course, if this was a movie, this is where all hell breaks loose, because 10 minutes later, he sees the exact same car. It's bullet written. But also we hear about that moment where he's in the ambulance with Tupac, where he's trying to find out what happened, who attacked him. And even in that moment, when Tupac is still alive, he's clearly hurt. He's bleeding. As we hear his response is, no, we'll take care of it. It tells you that up until that moment, he still didn't want the police involved. Up until that moment, the beef was on and that Tupac wanted to take it on himself.

15:13Something else in that testimony as well, because when you say he stopped Suge Knight and Tupac when they were in the car before, he noted that Tupac had a giant gold chain on. Exactly. And he said, that's a big bit of gold that you have around your neck. And people were laughing at the time. But yeah, I think it also tells you about the exchange that they had before all of this happened. And then the defense clarified, did you see that chain on him when you then found him after he'd been shot? And was it checked into the hospital? And he said, no, we don't know where they're going with that line of questioning, but it's a detail that we haven't heard before.

15:44I want to talk about another witness who was a bystander or was in another car. But I also just want to bring up the fact that many of our viewers won't be aware, but in this jurisdiction, the jury can ask questions. And this was the first time we saw that with this next witness. This is the first time that I saw that. And I found that quite remarkable. This is a woman who she heard the gunfire. And again, she said all hell broke loose. She didn't see the shooter. But what was remarkable is that the jury then came back with a question. The question was, well, did you hear which direction the shooting was coming from?

16:16And she said no. and again it was a very very basic question to someone who was there at that time given it was a very long time ago but if you're if you're in the jury you're like well how dependable is that how much can we depend on what she said other than the fact that she heard gunshots yeah and it's important because she was brought up by the prosecution who said you're gonna hear about a car full of broads i'm assuming or i'm hoping that's a quote and not just how they talk um and she was from inside that car full of broads she was going on a night out with her girls and One of them knew Suge Knight and she stops to have a conversation with him.

16:48And she's going to go into the driving seat. And as she's unbuckling her seatbelt, that's when the shots ring out. But yeah, that jury question highlights that she didn't really see all that much. What the defense is trying to say is this was a long time ago. How reliable are those witnesses? If a witness has said that she was there, that she had heard it, that she was there when it all went down, when all hell broke loose, quote unquote. but she couldn't tell you where the direction is coming from, how dependable other witnesses are going to be. And so again, it's just constantly poking holes at these witnesses and their reliability.

17:23And then to finish the day, we had a 40-minute recording played of the 1997 interview. What did you make of that? I mean, first of all, it was really, really hard to hear and you had to follow that script. Yeah. And it was all about the car. So this is after the death of Biggie Smalls, obviously another legendary hip-hop icon. Exactly. And Dwayne Davis is pretty quickly identified as somebody who was at the party when he was shot. And he's put in the parameter of Christopher Wallace and also Puffy Combs. And he does this 1997 interview. And we're hearing the transcript from it. So we're hearing what the prosecution has promised, which is Keefy D.

17:5940 minutes of it. What do I make of it? I'm not sure where they're going with it right now because we have heard a lot of back and forth about whose car he was driving. And it seems quite irrelevant. But we are building to something. and we know what the prosecution's narrative is. For me, I think the one bit of usefulness, I think, is that Keefe Dee started off giving details about that night of Tupac's murder because he was asked about Biggie Smalls. Because essentially the police went to him because they wanted to know what happened that night, where he was, what he knew. And he said, look, I can't tell you about the killing of Biggie Smalls.

18:37I can't tell you about Wallace's death. But I can tell you what happened in Tupac's night. So I'm hoping they're going to circle back to that moment. But they sure as hell went through so much detail into what happened that night with Biggie Smalls, with Puffy Combs, to then get us back into Tupac. I'm hoping that that's what they'll do. I'm not sure it will. Yeah. If we take the prosecution from their opening statements, this 1997 interview is going to pave the way for those 2008-2009 interviews, which were about Biggie Smalls and then obviously became about Tupac. We'll see. We're going to be here every single day.

19:10They're saying a month. I don't think it's going to last a month because five witnesses in one day. I mean, they've gone through so many and so much today, actually. And so I don't know how long this is going to last, but also how many witnesses are going to take the stand. Shaima, thank you so much for breaking that down for us today. It's a pleasure being with you.

19:30That was the BBC's North American correspondent, Shaima Khalil. And that's it for this episode of Fame Under Fire, the two-pack murder trial with me, Anishka Matanda-Dawati. from BBC Sounds. Make sure you subscribe and turn on those push notifications because you do not want to miss a thing. We are doing daily coverage of this trial. What's that saying about not letting the truth get in the way of a good story? Well, I'm Carell Prince and I'm in the way. Online, I catch out some of the biggest names in football holding their tall tales to account. But now, the tables have turned. Can I spot the truth from the lies as those same guys who I try to catch try and catch me out?

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