He explained: “It just prejudiced the whole thing from the beginning. It poisoned that water,” Sanft explained, using a sports reference to explain the impact of losing those pretrial motions.
“So as a result, we were (at) a high school football game. We’re walking in. We’re about doing an opening kick-off. You look up and the scoreboard’s already zero for us and 52 for the state. You see what I’m saying? Horrible position to be in, but that’s what we had.”
It took a Clark County jury under three hours on Monday to find Davis guilty of orchestrating the murder of rapper Shakur in 1996 in Las Vegas. He died six days after being shot.
Sanft called three witnesses in Davis’ defense, but Davis did not testify on his own behalf.
The jury of six men and 10 women ‚ before Clark County District Judge Carli Kierny pared the number to 12, with four alternates — heard hours of audio tapes and saw transcripts of interviews Davis did with law enforcement in 2008 and 2009, and with Hollywood film crews in the summer of 2017.
In all of them, he detailed his role in avenging a beating his nephew – gangster Orlando Anderson – took on September 7, 1996, at the MGM Hotel and Casino after a Mike Tyson fight.
Prosecutors allege, and testimony fleshed out, an ongoing gang war that bubbled over that night.
Two years later, Davis wrote a book in which he admitted to his role in the shooting.
Witnesses who testified for the state said Davis insisted on retaliation and he – along with the three men with whom he was riding in a white Cadillac – hunted down Shakur and Death Row Records founder Suge Knight. Davis, prosecutors argued, handed a gun into the back seat of the Cadillac and Anderson reached his arm and the .40 caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun and shot at – and into – Knight’s black BMW.
Sanft, the day after the guilty verdict against Davis, said detectives did not fully investigate leads related to an additional light-colored Cadillac that witnesses saw the night of Shakur’s murder.
“What I’ll tell you flat out is that there is evidence out there of ownership of Cadillacs that was never looked into by people that had some motive here to get rid of Tupac Shakur,” he told the 8 News Now Investigators.
Sanft put two police detectives on the stand who both said they saw a white or cream-colored Cadillac leave Knight’s gated Las Vegas residence, following the BMW in which Shakur was riding in the passenger seat.
“Suge and Tupac were there approximately 30 minutes and they exited back out followed by a cream-colored Cadillac,” retired Metro officer Charlie Mangrum, a defense witness who was in uniform and on duty near Knight’s home the night of Shakur’s murder, said in court on the final day of witness testimony.
Another witness, retired Metro Sgt. Stan Hyt said he told jurors he also saw a cream-colored Cadillac leaving Knight’s estate.
“The last one was Suge Knight’s cream-colored Cadillac,” he said of the fleet of cars who left the home behind the black BMW in which Shakur was riding and Knight was driving.
Ultimately, that information was not enough to sway the jury. Sanft said the time the jury spent deliberating was too short for an adequate review of any evidence.
“I was hoping the ones that were more analytical, more inquisitive about the facts, would sit down and say, ‘okay, I get how you feel, but show me where exactly is it that says that they proved that.’ And I don’t think we got that because in essence, there was too small length of time. They went back, they had lunch, and then they deliberated.”
Sanft continued: “They didn’t give it the analysis that I think they should have as a jury.”
Even after the guilty verdict, Sanft believes in his client’s innocence.
“There’s no evidence saying that he was even Las Vegas,” Sanft said. “You know, the amazing thing about what we’re doing here is they never put any of the four people that were in the car except for Orlando Anderson in Las Vegas. We just think that somehow they were here.”
Davis, now facing life in prison, is due back in court in October for his sentencing.