Las Vegas turns to daily drawings as crowds seek limited access to Keefe D’s long-awaited trial in Tupac Shakur’s murder.
Keefe D’s murder trial is turning public entry into a daily gamble, with scarce courtroom seats awarded through a lottery.
According to 8 News Now, the Eighth Judicial District Court ordered daily drawings because public demand exceeds the main courtroom’s capacity.
Visitors must register in Room 2421 before the one-hour cutoff for each court day’s drawing. Winning entrants receive courtroom access under marshal supervision, while others may use the overflow room’s first-come video feed.
Courts regularly use lotteries when celebrity proceedings attract more spectators than secure seating can accommodate.
Join Us
AllHipHop’s Daily News Service
Delivering news to inboxes since 1999. We break it. They take it. Get it first, straight from AllHipHop.
In 1995, Los Angeles officials used a lottery for public seats during O.J. Simpson’s double-murder trial. The Los Angeles Times reports Michael Jackson’s 2005 trial used daily drawings, with deputies distributing 45 public seats each morning.
Los Angeles courts later used lotteries for Jackson’s 2013 wrongful-death trial and recent hearings involving Erik and Lyle Menendez.
Keefe D, whose legal name is Duane Davis, faces one murder count with deadly-weapon and criminal-gang allegations, and he pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors allege Keefe D supplied the gun and directed retaliation after Tupac’s group beat his nephew Orlando Anderson inside MGM Grand. Their case casts Keefe D as the organizer rather than the person who fired the fatal shots.
“I did not do it,” Davis told ABC News. “They don’t have nothing. And they know they don’t have nothing. They can’t even place me out here. They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing.”
AllHipHop previously reported that prosecutors plan to use Keefe D’s recorded interviews and 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, which place him inside the attackers’ Cadillac.
Tupac was riding beside Death Row Records boss Suge Knight after a Mike Tyson fight on September 7, 1996. A white Cadillac pulled alongside their BMW near Flamingo Road and Koval Lane before gunfire struck Tupac four times.
Tupac died six days later at age 25, while Knight survived the attack with a wound to his head.
The unsolved murder held public attention for three decades through investigations, theories, books, documentaries and relentless Hip-Hop debate. Keefe D’s 2023 arrest finally gave the public a courtroom test of allegations that had circulated for years.
The Las Vegas trial begins August 10 and is expected to last approximately four weeks.