The former gang leader charged with murder in the investigation into the 27-year-old killing of hip-hop star Tupac Shakur appeared again in a Las Vegas court Thursday.

Duane Davis, known as “Keefe D”, 60, was charged last month in the murder investigation although he was not the one to hold the gun during the crime in the game town on September 7, 1996. Thursday’s hearing was supposed to be devoted to the indictment of the suspect who should have pleaded guilty or not guilty. But his lawyer, Ross Goodman, called for a dismissal, arguing that he had not been hired by his client in due form. “I’m going to give you two weeks, but in two weeks it has to move forward,” Judge Tierra Jones said.

The former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, a Los Angeles gang, has long admitted to being in the white Cadillac from which the four bullets were fired that killed Tupac Shakur at the age of 25. He boasted of being on the scene as the “commander” of the operation to take down Tupac as well as Death Row Records label boss Marion Knight, known as “Suge, in retaliation for an attack on his nephew. But he argued that the shots were fired from the rear of the vehicle while he was in the front.

Also read: A suspect arrested in Las Vegas for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, 27 years later

Under Nevada law, however, anyone who abets and participates in the commission of a murder can be charged with the murder in question in the same way that the driver of a vehicle used by bank robbers can be charged with robbery. . Tupac Shakur, known for the hits Dear Mama, California Love and Changes, was a huge star in the rap world at the time of his death. He depended on Death Row Records, a label associated at the time with the Los Angeles gang Mob Piru, at war for a long time with Duane Davis’ South Side Compton Crips.

Prosecutors said last month that the prosecution had long suspected he was involved in the murder but did not have enough evidence to charge him. Things began to unravel when Davis, who according to media reports is the only person still alive among those in the Cadillac on the fateful date, published an autobiography and discussed the murder on television.