Davis Tupac Trial Opens; Meta Trial Begins

The Las Vegas murder trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis opened with prosecutors portraying the 1996 Tupac Shakur killing as a revenge plot orchestrated by Davis, who is accused of planning the shooting but not firing the gun, while the defense questioned the strength of the evidence including Davis’s memoirs. Day-one witnesses included police officers and others connected to the night of the shooting, and prosecutors outlined a timeline and noted they would rely on materials from Davis’s book to bolster their case; Davis has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon and faces life in prison if convicted. The case, decades after the Las Vegas Strip shooting near MGM Grand, remains a high-profile pursuit seeking to establish Davis’s alleged role as mastermind. In Oakland, separate high-stakes litigation against Meta Platforms was also underway, with state attorneys general seeking damages and major changes to Facebook and Instagram; Meta contends it has protections for teens and expects to contest the claims over approximately six to eight weeks of trial, overseen by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The two proceedings highlight renewed scrutiny of both a long-cold criminal case and a major tech-company regulatory case on consumer protection and data practices. The Tupac proceedings have drawn extensive media attention, while the Meta case represents one of the largest consumer-protection lawsuits in U.S. history.