All in Nouvelles

Guilty, according to the jury Duane Keefe D Davis was the one who orchestraded Tupac Sakur’s murder in Las Vegas more than three decades ago. I happenned to be in Vegas at the same time that the trial started so I decided to go and check it out.

It was quite the ride to get there from where I was staying at the south end of the Las Vegas Boulevard. I had to get to the the Clark County District Court in downtown Las Vegas. It took me about an hour to get there with the Deuce. Traffic and long stops were making it longer. A lot of people were getting in and out at most of them.

It was pretty easy to get into the building and most of the staff were very friendly. Not only was it my first trial in the United States but also my first one ever ! I will focus mostly on what happened on that day rather than on the trial itself or its verdict. I did not know that the jury selection was going to be right at the beginning. I thought that it would have been done already and the first day was going to be right into it.

That is what I witnessed mostly on that day. What they did at first was to ask all the people that were jury prospects if for any reason they could not be part of the jury. I was surprised to see how many did have all sorts of reasons for not being able to attend, they eliminated a lot of them.

We could see but mostly hear what was being said and done on a livestream that was projected on a screen in a room downstairs. That is also where we left our names in order to be able to get into the courtroom. There would be a draw between members of the media and the general public to see who would get in or not.

We could not take any pictures or record while it was being projected. It lasted a while, not even halfway through they told us that there was going to be enough seats for everyone to get into the courtroom. We had to come back in the same room after lunch to get our passes.

I was expecting to see more media presence although most of the local networks were there, it wasn’t the frenzy that I expected. They would probably all show up near the end as this was only the jury selection.

After lunch we got our passes and we were able to get into the courtroom. They eliminated a lot of candidates from the list that had a good enough reason to be removed from it. The ones that were left had to show up one at a time to be interviewed by the judge, the state of Nevada and defense until they would find 16 that would make the jury for the trial. I was sitting on the left side right behind the accused and his lawyer. I exchanged a few looks with the accused so that was very special, he seemed very cool and calm for a trial of that importance.

Jury candidates went on through one by one and were being interviewed. It was pretty much the same questions each time. The judge always asked hers first, then the state and defense were exchanging turns on who would ask theirs first.

There were two guys on the state side taking turns on who would ask the questions and defense was only the lawyer. You can immediatly tell that it’s runned by the gouvernment when the very first two questions that the judge asks the candidates is what is your profession and what is your highest level of education.

Some other questions that were often asked : do you or have you watched any crime solving TV shows and there will be talks of gang activity on this trial is that something you’re comfortable with ?

I liked the lawyer, his look but also the way he was talking. He was a bit sarcastic close to being funny. He did make me laugh a few times actually ! Some candidates, I could tell that they did not want to be a part of it while others looked pretty excited about it.

I interacted with a few people from the public and they were all nice besides one. He looked at me like he was about to jump me ! Then he asked me if I was Steve, not too sure about the name but I said no I’m Eric from Vancouver, BC Canada. I guess he had mistaken me for someone else ! I saw him again on the little smoking patio outside and we were fine. The view from there was very nice. You can see that the strip is quite far from there and that’s only the northern part, I was at the other end !

I really enjoyed my experience but I did not go back even though I was still in the city for the rest of the week. I knew that it was going to probably be the jury selection all week and I already had seen that on top of it being far from me. Jury selection was very repetitive but it was interesting for me to see what type of people could or would be members of the jury. It was an historic case so it sure is nice to be able to say that I was there on the very first day.