Guilty Pleasures
By NewsPress Now
Ex-gang leader’s account of Tupac Shakur killing is fiction, defense lawyer says
LAS VEGAS | The defense attorney representing a former Los Angeles-area gang leader accused of killing hip-hop music icon Tupac Shakur in 1996 in Las Vegas said Tuesday his client’s accounts of the killing are fiction and prosecutors lack key evidence to obtain a murder conviction.
“He himself is giving different stories,” attorney Carl Arnold told reporters outside a courtroom following a brief status check with his client, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, in front of a Nevada judge. His trial is scheduled for Nov. 4.
“We haven’t seen more than just his word,” Arnold said of Davis’ police and media interviews since 2008 in which prosecutors say he incriminated himself in Shakur’s killing — including Davis’ 2019 tell-all memoir of life leading a street gang in Compton, California.
Prosecutor Binu Palal did not immediately comment outside court about Arnold’s statements. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has said evidence against Davis is strong and it will be up to a jury to decide the credibility of Davis’ accounts.
Arnold said his client wanted to make money with his story, so he embellished or outright lied about his involvement in the car-to-car shooting that killed Shakur and wounded rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight at a traffic signal near the Las Vegas Strip in September 1996.
Knight, now 59, is serving 28 years in a California prison for killing a Compton businessman with a vehicle in 2015. He was not called by prosecutors to testify before the grand jury that indicted Davis last year.
Arnold said Davis will not testify at trial, but he intends to call Knight to testify. The defense attorney said police and prosecutors lack proof that Davis was in Las Vegas at the time of Shakur’s killing, and don’t have the gun and car used during the shooting as evidence.
“We’ve seen video of everybody else here. Where’s video of him?” Arnold said of Davis. “There’s just nothing saying that he was here.”
Davis has been jailed on $750,000 bail since his arrest in September. Arnold said Tuesday that Davis has been unable to raise the 10% needed to obtain a bond to be released to house arrest.
Davis, 60, is originally from Compton. Police, prosecutors and Davis say he is the only person still alive who was in the car from which shots were fired.
Davis pleaded not guilty in November to first-degree murder. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
In his book, Davis wrote that he was promised immunity from prosecution when he told authorities in Los Angeles what he knew about the fatal shootings of Shakur and rival rapper Christopher Wallace six months later in Los Angeles. Wallace was known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls.
Shakur had five No. 1 albums, was nominated for six Grammy Awards and was inducted in 2017 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He received a posthumous star last year on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Minnesota and other Democratic-led states lead pushback on censorship
ST. PAUL, Minn. | A movement to ban book bans is gaining steam in Minnesota and several other states, in contrast to the trend playing out in more conservative states where book challenges have soared to their highest levels in decades.
The move to quash book bans is welcome to people like Shae Ross, a queer and out Minnesota high school senior who has fought on the local level against bans on books dealing with sexuality, gender and race. Ross, 18, said she is encouraged to see her governor and leaders of other states are taking the fight statewide.
“For a lot of teenagers, LGBT teenagers and teenagers who maybe just don’t feel like they have a ton of friends, or a ton of popularity in middle or high school … literature becomes sort of an escape.” Ross said. “Especially when I was like sixth, seventh grade, I’d say reading books, especially books with gay characters … was a way that I could feel seen and represented.”
Minnesota is one of several Democratic-leaning states where lawmakers are now pursuing bans on book bans. The Washington and Maryland legislatures have already passed them this year, while Illinois did so last year. It was a major flashpoint of Oregon’s short session, where legislation passed the Senate but died without a House vote.
According to the American Library Association, over 4,200 works in school and public libraries were targeted in 2023, a jump from the old record of nearly 2,600 books in 2022. Many challenged books — 47% in 2023 — had LGBTQ+ and racial themes.
Restrictions in some states have increased so much that librarians and administrators fear crippling lawsuits, hefty fines and even imprisonment if they provide books that others regard as inappropriate. Already this year, lawmakers in more than 15 states have introduced bills to impose harsh penalties on libraries or librarians.
Conservative parents and activists argue that the books are too sexually explicit or otherwise controversial, and are inappropriate, especially for younger readers. National groups such as Moms for Liberty say parents are entitled to more control over books available to their children.
But pushback is emerging. According to EveryLibrary, a political action committee for libraries, several states are considering varying degrees of prohibitions on book bans. A sampling includes California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, though some in conservative states appear unlikely to pass. One has also died in New Mexico this year.
One such bill is awaiting Democratic Gov. Wes Moore’s signature in Maryland. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill last month that sets a high bar for removing challenged materials, especially those dealing with race, sexual orientation and gender identity. A version pending in New Jersey would protect librarians from civil or criminal liability.
Some proposals are labeled “Freedom to Read” acts.
“That’s what’s so critical here. The voluntary nature of reading,” said Martha Hickson, a librarian at North Hunterdon High School in New Jersey. “Students can choose to read, not read, or totally ignore everything in this library. No one is asking them to read a damn thing.”
Hickson recalled how parents first suggested her book collections contained pedophilia and pornography during a school board meeting in 2021. She watched the livestream in horror as they objected that the novel “Lawn Boy” and illustrated memoir “Gender Queer” were available to students and suggested she could be criminally liable.
“Tears welled up, shaking” Hickson said. “But once my body got done with that, my normal attitude, the fight side kicked in, and I picked up my cellphone while the meeting was still going on and started reaching out.”
Book bans have been a sore point for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher. The Minnesota Senate passed his proposal this month. It would prohibit book bans in public and school libraries based on content or ideological objections and require that the key decisions about what books will or won’t be offered be made by library professionals.
The state House is considering an approach with more teeth, including penalties and allowing private citizens to sue to enforce it.
“I’m working with stakeholders, with the Department of Education, librarians, school districts and their representatives,” said Democratic Rep. Cedrick Frazier, of New Hope. “We’re working to tighten up the language, to make sure we can come to a consensus, and just kind of make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”
Ross, a student at Jefferson High School in Bloomington, was alarmed when she heard last year that conservative groups were organizing in her community to ban books based on their content. So she and her friends got organized themselves, and they helped persuade their school board to make it much harder to remove books and other materials from their libraries and classrooms.
Because of her activism, Ross was invited when Walz went to Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul last month to view a display of books banned elsewhere. The governor called book bans “the antithesis of everything we believe” and denounced what he depicted as a growing effort to bully school boards.
At a House hearing last month, speakers said books by LGBTQ+ and authors of color are among those most frequently banned. Karlton Laster, director of policy and organizing for OutFront Minnesota, who identifies as Black and queer, said reading their works helped him “communicate my hard feelings and truths to my family and friends,” and helped him come out to his family.
Kendra Redmond, a Bloomington mother with three children in public schools, testified about efforts to push back against a petition drive by conservatives to pull about 28 titles from the city’s school libraries.
Pushback from Ross, Redmond and others succeeded. The Bloomington School Board last month made it much harder to seek removals. Parents can still restrict access by their own children to material they deem objectionable.
Many challenges in the district came from the Bloomington Parents Alliance. One of its leaders, Alan Redding, recalled how his son’s 9th grade class was discussing a book a few years ago when graphic passages about date rape were read aloud in class. He said his son and other kids were unprepared for something so explicit.
“They were clearly bothered by this and disgusted,” Redding said. “My son absolutely shut down for the semester.”
Minnesota Republican lawmakers have argued that instead of worrying about book bans, they should be focusing instead on performance in a state where just under half of public school students can read at grade level.
“Every book is banned for a child that doesn’t know how to read,” said GOP Rep. Patricia Mueller, a teacher from Austin.
Crew members injured in crash on set of Eddie Murphy movie ‘The Pickup’
Several crew members were injured and two were hospitalized when a car and truck collided during shooting of the Eddie Murphy film “The Pickup” from Amazon MGM Studios, the studio and a person close to the production said Tuesday.
A studio spokesperson said in a statement to The Associated Press that the scene that led to Saturday’s accident in Georgia had been rehearsed and all safety precautions were taken.
Neither Murphy nor the film’s other stars, including Keke Palmer and Pete Davidson, were on the set at the time.
The injuries ranged from bumps and bruises to broken bones, the person close to the production said. Two crew members were taken to the hospital, and one remained hospitalized Tuesday. All are expected to make a full recovery.
The accident happened on a location outside of Atlanta when a truck locked up and hit a car, the person said.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
“It was a completely freak accident,” the person said. “It wasn’t even a complicated or dangerous stunt.”
The scene was being shot by a second unit on the production, which generally shoots less-central scenes not involving the director or principal actors.
“Unfortunately, the sequence did not go as planned and several members of the crew were injured as a result. We are still in the process of gathering facts on what happened and why, but first and foremost our thoughts are with those who are recovering,” a statement to the AP from the studio spokesperson said. “The well-being of the entire crew and cast is our first priority, and we will continue to insist on the highest industry standards of safety while filming. All safety precautions were reviewed prior to and monitored during the shoot.”
The studio did not give details on the injuries or the roles of the crew members who were hurt.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the union representing most film crew members, said in a statement to the AP that they were aware of the accident and have begun an inquiry, but could not yet provide further details.
The film is directed by Tim Story, whose credits include 2002’s “Barbershop” and 2005’s “Fantastic Four.” It has been shooting in an around Atlanta since Feb. 20. It does not yet have a release date, but the production is not expected to be delayed by the accident.
MLB players’ union asks court to confirm arbitration decision against Bad Bunny firm
NEW YORK | The baseball players’ association asked a federal court to confirm an arbitrator’s decision denying an attempt by a baseball agent at Bad Bunny’s Rimas Sports firm to block the agent’s decertification by the union.
In a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the Major League Baseball Players Association asked that a federal judge issue an order to confirm what the union said was a decision by arbitrator Michael Gottesman to deny a request for a temporary restraining order requested by William Arroyo of Rimas Sports and Noah Assad and Jonathan Miranda, two executives of the company.
The union said it issued a notice of discipline to the three on April 10 and fined them $400,000 for misconduct. Arroyo was an agent certified by the union to represent players and represented New York Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez and infielder Ronny Mauricio.
Assad and Miranda had applied for certification, the union said.
“After detailing extensive, serious violations of the MLBPA regulations, including those prohibiting inducements and unlawful recruiters and requiring cooperation with MLBPA investigations, the MLBPA revoked Mr. Arroyo’s certification and denied certification to applicants Messrs. Assad and Miranda,” the union said.
The union said it agreed to let Gottesman hear the application by the three for a temporary restraining order. Represented by lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, the union did not appear to file a copy of Gottesman’s decision with its complaint, which was first reported by ESPN.
Bad Bunny is one of the top-selling artists in the world whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. The three-time Grammy winner launched Rimas Sports in April of 2023.
Rimas Sports did not immediately respond to a email seeking comment.
—From AP reports
