Keefe D is confronting his own television history, as prosecutors use documentary insiders to challenge his claim that his Tupac stories were entertainment.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Dorsey returned Monday as the Tupac Shakur murder trial of Duane Davis entered its second week in Las Vegas.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft has built his case around a blunt argument that Keefe D repeatedly sold fiction as fact for attention and money.
“The state has just told you what they believe is the evidence in this case. What they are telling you, they are representing as fact, when it’s really fiction,” Sanft told jurors during opening statements.
That argument makes Dorsey and Death Row Chronicles director Mario Diaz important because both worked on Keefe D’s 2017 interviews, which followed years of research into Tupac and his killing.
“Well, there’s the kind of philosophical aspect of it, which is my goal is to get at the truth, but also my goal is to tell the public a good story, something that I think is of the public interest that they should know,” Dorsey testified.
Diaz addressed the defense theory even more directly Friday when prosecutors asked whether Death Row Chronicles had scripted Keefe D’s answers.
“No. No. And I pride myself in making sure that my work meets the strictest journalistic standards. I did not coach him in any way. We had meetings where I generally, very brief meetings when he was in the office, where I generally told him sort of where I was going with my questioning, but there was no coaching, no coercion, nothing of the sort. Nothing was predetermined,” Diaz testified.
Dorsey said he helped develop questions, listened to Keefe D live from another room and sent Diaz follow-ups during both interview sessions.
He also made a phone recording of the interview feed, which prosecutors later obtained after subpoenaing him for the preserved audio.
The filmmakers’ testimony gives prosecutors a direct answer to Sanft’s claim that Keefe D’s televised accounts were manufactured for show business.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal says Keefe D organized retaliation after Tupac’s entourage attacked his nephew Orlando Anderson at the MGM Grand.
“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew. Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself,” Palal told jurors.
The jury has also heard the protected 2008 task-force interview in which Keefe D described securing the gun and moving it toward the Cadillac’s rear seat.
That session fell under an agreement that prevented investigators from using his statements against him, provided he complied with the deal’s conditions.
That private account matters because prosecutors argue his later public interviews repeated key details, while the defense says those stories were profitable fiction.
Keefe D entered a not-guilty plea, and Nevada law allows a life sentence if jurors convict him of the murder charge.
Suge Knight remains listed as a prosecution witness while completing a 28-year California term stemming from an unrelated voluntary manslaughter case.
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