The former gang member accused of orchestrating Tupac Shakur's murder acted out of "revenge" because he harbored a "visceral anger" against the rapper for humiliating his nephew, and confessed everything himself, the prosecution argued Monday.

Thirty years after the never-solved death of the rap legend, the trial of Duane "Keffe D" Davis, former figure of the South Side Compton Crips - a gang from a sensitive area of Los Angeles - got down to business, after a week spent selecting the jurors.

"Let's be clear: Duane Davis did not pull the trigger, but what he did was plan the retaliation for the beating of his nephew," summarized prosecutor Binu Palal before the Las Vegas court.

The 63-year-old former drug trafficker pleaded not guilty and faces a life sentence without parole.

Shrouded in mystery, the crime is among the most famous "cold cases" in the United States.

On the night of September 7, 1996, Tupac was wounded by gunfire from a white Cadillac in Las Vegas after he attended a Mike Tyson boxing match. The rapper died six days later at the age of 25.

According to the prosecution, it was retribution because Tupac had humiliated Duane Davis' nephew in a fight a few hours earlier.

- "Answer" -

Thirty years after the events, prosecutor Palal plunged the jurors back into the fierce rivalries between the rap scenes of the West and East coasts of the United States during the 90s, mixing music and gangs.

With his hits "California Love" and "All Eyez on Me", Tupac Shakur embodied the slightly poetic bad boy of the "West Coast".

It was produced by Death Row Records, a label run by Marion "Suge" Knight, who used Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang of which he was a member, to provide protection for the artists.

On the other side, the New York label Bad Boy Records, founded by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, hired a rival gang, the South Side Compton Crips, during its travels in the West to ensure the protection of its rappers like "The Notorious BIG" - killed six months after the death of Tupac Shakur.

These tensions turned into a tragedy after Mike Tyson's fight in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand casino.

Suge and Tupac assaulted Duane Davis' nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, because he had participated in a brawl during which a member of Mob Piru had his Death Row label medallion ripped off.

"Duane Davis knew that, in his world, this called for a response," Mr. Palal suggested.

And "over the years, (...) Duane Davis has described to us again and again the anger he felt and his own role in the revenge shooting targeting Tupac Shakur," the prosecutor insisted.

- Compromising memoirs -

As early as 2008, Duane Davis admitted to police that he was in the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired, during an investigation related to the death of "The Notorious BIG".

But his revelations came as part of an agreement providing partial immunity, which prevented his statements from being used against him in the investigation into the murder of Tupac Shakur.

Over the years, the passengers of the infamous Cadillac died. The former gang member then began to speak out in the media, and later published compromising memoirs in 2019.

He recounts that he was in the passenger seat of the vehicle, and passed the gun to the passengers in the back seat, without revealing the identity of the shooter.

"Seeing them attack my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something to them," he wrote, in a passage quoted Monday by the prosecutor.

But Duane Davis now claims that his book was fictionalized by his co-author, and that he was in Los Angeles on the night of the murder.

On Monday, his lawyer Michael Sanft emphasized the weaknesses of the investigation - the Cadillac was never found, nor was the murder weapon - and asserted that the accusation was based on "fiction", rather than on verifiable facts.

According to Duane Davis, the reason he wasn't prosecuted before was because law enforcement thought he was "talking nonsense".

"Ask yourselves this question," he said to the jurors. "What facts do they have after 30 years?"