By RICHARD WINTON Los Angeles Times/TNS
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While Las Vegas Metro police had 27 years to make a case in the slaying of Tupac Shakur, a new lawyer for the man accused of orchestrating the killing says authorities have no gun, no car and no witnesses.

The arraignment for Duane “Keffe D” Davis in Shakur’s 1996 killing was delayed Thursday for a second time, postponed for two weeks while a new lawyer, Ross Goodman, seeks to take over legal representation.

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Authorities have said some of the most compelling evidence in the shooting comes from the suspect himself.

But Goodman, the son of former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, questioned how authorities could verify the stories Davis, a former Compton gang leader, has recounted of his involvement in the deadly confrontation on Sept. 7, 1996.

“As everyone here knows, you have to corroborate those statements. You don’t have a car, you don’t have a gun and you don’t have witnesses to corroborate with what Mr. Davis said under those circumstances,” Goodman said. “I believe there is an obvious defense to that — why he made those statements and a motive for making those statements.”

Prosecutors say Davis, who was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of murder with a firearm, didn’t pull the trigger. He and Marion “Suge” Knight, the head of Death Row Records who was in the car with Shakur, are the only living witnesses.

Instead, Davis is accused of providing the gun and encouraging the killing as revenge for a beating that his nephew Orlando Anderson received at the hands of Shakur, Knight and other Mob Piru Blood gang members at the MGM Grand Hotel hours earlier.

Anderson, who was killed in a gang shootout in Compton a year and a half after Shakur’s death, was long considered the gunman; The Los Angeles Times identified him as such in 1998. At the time of Shakur’s shooting, he was in the back of the Cadillac with DeAndre “Big Dre” Smith, who died in 2004.

Davis identified Anderson as the shooter in 2008 when he finally talked to authorities with the protection of a proffer from the Los Angeles Police Department and FBI, meaning his statements could not be used against him.

In that interview, then-LAPD Det. Greg Kading asked whether Anderson, a.k.a. Baby Lane, was the shooter.

“He leaned over, and Orlando rolled down the window and popped him,” Davis replied. “If they would have drove on my side, I would have popped them. But they was on the other side.”

Davis would go on to repeat that story in a series of internet and blog interviews.

But in his 2019 book, “Compton Street Legend,” Davis began to change the story.

“Tupac made an erratic move and began to reach down beneath his seat,” Davis wrote. “It was the first and only time in my life that I could relate to the police command, ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’ Instead, Pac pulled out a strap, and that’s when the fireworks started. One of my guys from the back seat grabbed the Glock and started bustin’ back.”

Kading said that following the indictment, everything Davis said after the proffer and formal agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office is fair game for investigators, and every interview just made it easier to eventually charge him in Shakur’s death.

“He was the best witness against himself,” Kading said. “Ego and greed caught up with him.”

Standing outside the Clark County Courthouse on Thursday, Goodman said the statements to various media outlets and in Davis’ book were made shortly after Davis was diagnosed with colon cancer.

“I don’t know if that is a confession. That is a legal conclusion,” the lawyer said.