Nevada
Judge denies bid by the suspect in Tupac Shakur’s killing for new trial in jailhouse fight
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who is awaiting trial in the 1996 killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur, has lost a bid for a new trial in a separate battery case tied to a jailhouse fight.
The ruling came Wednesday after a tense hearing in a Las Vegas courtroom that underscored the high-profile status of the defendant and his upcoming trial in one of hip-hop’s most infamous crimes.
The jurors who convicted Davis of battery in the jailhouse fight were put on the witness stand Wednesday. One by one, each of them denied claims by Davis’ son and a man who describes himself as a journalist that they overheard one of the jurors talking about the battery case during a lunch break ahead of deliberations.
Both Davis’ son, Duane Davis Jr., and the self-described journalist, Richard Bond, testified Wednesday about hearing the juror’s comments in the hallway outside of the courtroom on the final day of a two-day trial in April.
“Those two witnesses do have a relationship and a bias and a motive to testify in a certain way, whether subconsciously or not,” Clark County District Judge Nadia Krall said while ruling from the bench.
It was revealed Wednesday when prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo questioned the men separately that they considered each other friends, that Bond had been sending money to both Duane Davis and his son, and that Bond had advised them to fire their attorney, Carl Arnold.
“Ever taken a class on journalistic ethics?” DiGiacomo asked Bond.
“No, I have not taken a class on journalistic ethics,” Bond said.
The fight in December 2024 in a common room was captured on security video. Prosecutors said Davis was being escorted by a corrections officer back to his unit when he and another man exchanged words and then started fighting. Arnold said he was ambushed and acted in self-defense.
DiGiacomo, who also is prosecuting Duane Davis in the Shakur killing, said after court that he had no comment. A spokesperson for Arnold’s office also declined to comment.
Arnold said in court Wednesday that his client did not receive a fair trial in the battery case because of the juror’s apparent comments. The juror himself denied it multiple times while on the witness stand.
Wednesday’s hearing was not the first time that the credibility of those with ties to Davis has been questioned in court.
Davis, the only person ever charged in Shakur’s death, had sought to be freed from custody shortly after his arrest in September 2023. But a judge rejected his request, saying she suspected a cover-up of the true source of funds for his bond.
A music record executive offering to underwrite Davis’ $750,000 bail at the time testified that he obtained the money legally and wanted to help Davis because he’s “always been a monumental person in our community.”
But the judge said she was skeptical after receiving two identical letters apparently from an entertainment company that Cash “Wack 100” Jones says wired him the funds as payment for his work. One letter was signed with a name that had no ties to the company, the judge said, while the other included a misspelled name and a return address tied to a doctor’s office.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He’s accused of orchestrating the fatal drive-by shooting of Shakur nearly 30 years ago at a traffic light near the Las Vegas Strip.
Prosecutors say the evidence against Davis is strong, including his own accounts of the shooting throughout the years in interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir. His trial is scheduled for February.
Shakur’s death at 25 came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is still largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.
Georgia
Immigration judge grants bond for Spanish-language journalist arrested during protest
ATLANTA (AP) — An immigration judge in Georgia on Tuesday granted bond for a well-known Spanish-language journalist arrested while covering a protest last month, meaning he will be free as the government seeks to deport him from the United States.
Mario Guevara, a native of El Salvador, was arrested by local police on June 14 while covering a protest just outside Atlanta and was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement several days later. He has been held at an immigration detention center in Folkston — in southeast Georgia, near the Florida border — since then.
MG News, a digital news outlet that Guevara started about a year ago, posted on social media Tuesday that a judge had granted him bond.
Guevara, 47, fled El Salvador two decades ago and built a large following as a journalist covering immigration in the Atlanta area. He worked for Mundo Hispanico, a Spanish-language newspaper, for years before starting MG News. He was livestreaming video on social media from a DeKalb County rally protesting President Donald Trump’s administration when local police arrested him.
“I’m a member of the media, officer,” Guevara tells a police officer right before he’s arrested. The video shows Guevara wearing a bright red shirt under a protective vest with “PRESS” printed across his chest.
Guevara’s video shows him standing on a sidewalk with other journalists, with no sign of big crowds or confrontations around him, right before he’s arrested.
DeKalb County officials have said at least eight people were arrested during the demonstration, with police using tear gas to turn away protesters marching toward an interstate onramp.
DeKalb police charged Guevara with unlawful assembly, obstruction of police and being a pedestrian on or along the roadway. DeKalb County Solicitor-General Donna Coleman-Stribling last week dismissed those charges, saying that while probable cause existed to support the arrest, there wasn’t enough evidence to support a prosecution.
“At the time of his arrest, the video evidence shows Mr. Guevara generally in compliance and does not demonstrate the intent to disregard law enforcement directives,” her office said in a news release.
But Guevara had already been turned over to ICE by that point.
The sheriff’s office in Gwinnett County, another part of suburban Atlanta, on June 20 said it had secured warrants for Guevara’s arrest on charges of distracted driving, failure to obey a traffic control device and reckless driving, saying that he had “compromised operational integrity and jeopardized the safety” of victims of a law enforcement case, investigators and Gwinnett residents.
An initial incident report says the charges stem from a May 20 incident, which it says was reported June 17. The narrative section of the report gives no details, and the names of two deputies are redacted under a section of law having to do with confidential sources.
Guevara’s attorney, Giovanni Diaz, has said Guevara isn’t a legal permanent resident but has authorization to work and remain in the United States. He has a pending green card application sponsored by his adult U.S. citizen son.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, along with other journalism and press freedom organizations, on June 20 sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to express “alarm” about Guevara’s arrest.
They requested that he be released on bond and that the deportation effort against him be dropped.
The organization said Tuesday that it welcomed the order to release Guevara but is “concerned by the government lawyer’s argument that livestreaming presented a danger to the public by compromising the integrity and safety of law enforcement activities.”
New York
Court orders reinstatement of convictions of ex-Fox executive, marketing firm in FIFA bribery case
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered reinstatement of the convictions of a former Fox executive and a South American sports media and marketing company in the FIFA bribery investigation.
Hernan Lopez, the former CEO of Fox International Channels, was convicted by a jury in March 2023 along with the marketing company Full Play Group SA of one count each of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy related to the Copa Libertadores soccer tournament.
Full Play was convicted of two additional counts each of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy related to World Cup qualifiers and friendlies and to the Copa America, the continent’s national team championship.
U.S. District Judge Pamela K. Chen, who presided over the trial in Brooklyn federal court, granted a motion for an acquittal in September 2023, citing a May 2023 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving Joseph Percoco, an aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and construction firm owner Louis Ciminelli. Chen wrote those decisions meant Lopez’s conviction could not be sustained under the honest services fraud statute. The U.S. government then appealed.
U.S. Senior Circuit Judge John M. Walker Jr. and U.S. Circuit Judges Beth Robinson and Sarah A. L. Merriam vacated Chen’s decision and ordered her to reinstate the convictions and to conduct additional proceedings consistent with their opinion.
Walker, writing for the panel, said “the nature of defendants’ conduct (bribery), coupled with the character of the relationship between the bribed officials and the organizations to whom they owed a duty of loyalty (employer-employee relationships), place the schemes presumptively within the scope of” the statute.
They added: “The foreign identity of certain organizations and officials does not remove the schemes from the ambit of” the statute, “especially where, as here, relevant conduct occurred in the United States, for the benefit of United States-based executives and organizations (e.g., Lopez and Fox), and the victims were multinational organizations with global operations and significant ties to the United States.”
The circuit judges said it was up to Chen to decide whether to grant a defense motion questioning whether the government’s evidence was sufficient to prove a conspiracy to deceive the South American governing body CONMEBOL.
“The proceedings that resulted in Hernan’s conviction were afflicted with numerous defects,” John Gleeson, a lawyer for Lopez, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Today, the Court of Appeals ruled against us on one discrete legal issue — the same issue that we believe Judge Pamela Chen ruled on correctly when she acquitted our client after trial. We intend to seek review of that issue in the Supreme Court of the United States, and have no doubt that our client will eventually be fully vindicated.”
Mayling C. Blanco and Michael Martinez, lawyers for Full Play, did not respond to emails from the AP seeking comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York had no comment.
Dozens of people have pleaded guilty or been convicted after a U.S.-led investigation into FIFA and international soccer. The probe became public in 2015 when U.S. prosecutors accused the leaders of soccer federations of tarnishing the sport for nearly a quarter-century by taking $150 million in bribes and payoffs.
“Corruption in international soccer is not new,” the circuit court wrote. “It was rampant for decades before the events at issue here.”
Fox Corp., which split from a subsidiary of international channels during a restructuring in 2019, was not charged and has denied any involvement in the bribery scandal.
Judge denies bid by the suspect in Tupac Shakur’s killing for new trial in jailhouse fight
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who is awaiting trial in the 1996 killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur, has lost a bid for a new trial in a separate battery case tied to a jailhouse fight.
The ruling came Wednesday after a tense hearing in a Las Vegas courtroom that underscored the high-profile status of the defendant and his upcoming trial in one of hip-hop’s most infamous crimes.
The jurors who convicted Davis of battery in the jailhouse fight were put on the witness stand Wednesday. One by one, each of them denied claims by Davis’ son and a man who describes himself as a journalist that they overheard one of the jurors talking about the battery case during a lunch break ahead of deliberations.
Both Davis’ son, Duane Davis Jr., and the self-described journalist, Richard Bond, testified Wednesday about hearing the juror’s comments in the hallway outside of the courtroom on the final day of a two-day trial in April.
“Those two witnesses do have a relationship and a bias and a motive to testify in a certain way, whether subconsciously or not,” Clark County District Judge Nadia Krall said while ruling from the bench.
It was revealed Wednesday when prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo questioned the men separately that they considered each other friends, that Bond had been sending money to both Duane Davis and his son, and that Bond had advised them to fire their attorney, Carl Arnold.
“Ever taken a class on journalistic ethics?” DiGiacomo asked Bond.
“No, I have not taken a class on journalistic ethics,” Bond said.
The fight in December 2024 in a common room was captured on security video. Prosecutors said Davis was being escorted by a corrections officer back to his unit when he and another man exchanged words and then started fighting. Arnold said he was ambushed and acted in self-defense.
DiGiacomo, who also is prosecuting Duane Davis in the Shakur killing, said after court that he had no comment. A spokesperson for Arnold’s office also declined to comment.
Arnold said in court Wednesday that his client did not receive a fair trial in the battery case because of the juror’s apparent comments. The juror himself denied it multiple times while on the witness stand.
Wednesday’s hearing was not the first time that the credibility of those with ties to Davis has been questioned in court.
Davis, the only person ever charged in Shakur’s death, had sought to be freed from custody shortly after his arrest in September 2023. But a judge rejected his request, saying she suspected a cover-up of the true source of funds for his bond.
A music record executive offering to underwrite Davis’ $750,000 bail at the time testified that he obtained the money legally and wanted to help Davis because he’s “always been a monumental person in our community.”
But the judge said she was skeptical after receiving two identical letters apparently from an entertainment company that Cash “Wack 100” Jones says wired him the funds as payment for his work. One letter was signed with a name that had no ties to the company, the judge said, while the other included a misspelled name and a return address tied to a doctor’s office.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He’s accused of orchestrating the fatal drive-by shooting of Shakur nearly 30 years ago at a traffic light near the Las Vegas Strip.
Prosecutors say the evidence against Davis is strong, including his own accounts of the shooting throughout the years in interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir. His trial is scheduled for February.
Shakur’s death at 25 came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is still largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.
Georgia
Immigration judge grants bond for Spanish-language journalist arrested during protest
ATLANTA (AP) — An immigration judge in Georgia on Tuesday granted bond for a well-known Spanish-language journalist arrested while covering a protest last month, meaning he will be free as the government seeks to deport him from the United States.
Mario Guevara, a native of El Salvador, was arrested by local police on June 14 while covering a protest just outside Atlanta and was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement several days later. He has been held at an immigration detention center in Folkston — in southeast Georgia, near the Florida border — since then.
MG News, a digital news outlet that Guevara started about a year ago, posted on social media Tuesday that a judge had granted him bond.
Guevara, 47, fled El Salvador two decades ago and built a large following as a journalist covering immigration in the Atlanta area. He worked for Mundo Hispanico, a Spanish-language newspaper, for years before starting MG News. He was livestreaming video on social media from a DeKalb County rally protesting President Donald Trump’s administration when local police arrested him.
“I’m a member of the media, officer,” Guevara tells a police officer right before he’s arrested. The video shows Guevara wearing a bright red shirt under a protective vest with “PRESS” printed across his chest.
Guevara’s video shows him standing on a sidewalk with other journalists, with no sign of big crowds or confrontations around him, right before he’s arrested.
DeKalb County officials have said at least eight people were arrested during the demonstration, with police using tear gas to turn away protesters marching toward an interstate onramp.
DeKalb police charged Guevara with unlawful assembly, obstruction of police and being a pedestrian on or along the roadway. DeKalb County Solicitor-General Donna Coleman-Stribling last week dismissed those charges, saying that while probable cause existed to support the arrest, there wasn’t enough evidence to support a prosecution.
“At the time of his arrest, the video evidence shows Mr. Guevara generally in compliance and does not demonstrate the intent to disregard law enforcement directives,” her office said in a news release.
But Guevara had already been turned over to ICE by that point.
The sheriff’s office in Gwinnett County, another part of suburban Atlanta, on June 20 said it had secured warrants for Guevara’s arrest on charges of distracted driving, failure to obey a traffic control device and reckless driving, saying that he had “compromised operational integrity and jeopardized the safety” of victims of a law enforcement case, investigators and Gwinnett residents.
An initial incident report says the charges stem from a May 20 incident, which it says was reported June 17. The narrative section of the report gives no details, and the names of two deputies are redacted under a section of law having to do with confidential sources.
Guevara’s attorney, Giovanni Diaz, has said Guevara isn’t a legal permanent resident but has authorization to work and remain in the United States. He has a pending green card application sponsored by his adult U.S. citizen son.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, along with other journalism and press freedom organizations, on June 20 sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to express “alarm” about Guevara’s arrest.
They requested that he be released on bond and that the deportation effort against him be dropped.
The organization said Tuesday that it welcomed the order to release Guevara but is “concerned by the government lawyer’s argument that livestreaming presented a danger to the public by compromising the integrity and safety of law enforcement activities.”
New York
Court orders reinstatement of convictions of ex-Fox executive, marketing firm in FIFA bribery case
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered reinstatement of the convictions of a former Fox executive and a South American sports media and marketing company in the FIFA bribery investigation.
Hernan Lopez, the former CEO of Fox International Channels, was convicted by a jury in March 2023 along with the marketing company Full Play Group SA of one count each of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy related to the Copa Libertadores soccer tournament.
Full Play was convicted of two additional counts each of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy related to World Cup qualifiers and friendlies and to the Copa America, the continent’s national team championship.
U.S. District Judge Pamela K. Chen, who presided over the trial in Brooklyn federal court, granted a motion for an acquittal in September 2023, citing a May 2023 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving Joseph Percoco, an aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and construction firm owner Louis Ciminelli. Chen wrote those decisions meant Lopez’s conviction could not be sustained under the honest services fraud statute. The U.S. government then appealed.
U.S. Senior Circuit Judge John M. Walker Jr. and U.S. Circuit Judges Beth Robinson and Sarah A. L. Merriam vacated Chen’s decision and ordered her to reinstate the convictions and to conduct additional proceedings consistent with their opinion.
Walker, writing for the panel, said “the nature of defendants’ conduct (bribery), coupled with the character of the relationship between the bribed officials and the organizations to whom they owed a duty of loyalty (employer-employee relationships), place the schemes presumptively within the scope of” the statute.
They added: “The foreign identity of certain organizations and officials does not remove the schemes from the ambit of” the statute, “especially where, as here, relevant conduct occurred in the United States, for the benefit of United States-based executives and organizations (e.g., Lopez and Fox), and the victims were multinational organizations with global operations and significant ties to the United States.”
The circuit judges said it was up to Chen to decide whether to grant a defense motion questioning whether the government’s evidence was sufficient to prove a conspiracy to deceive the South American governing body CONMEBOL.
“The proceedings that resulted in Hernan’s conviction were afflicted with numerous defects,” John Gleeson, a lawyer for Lopez, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Today, the Court of Appeals ruled against us on one discrete legal issue — the same issue that we believe Judge Pamela Chen ruled on correctly when she acquitted our client after trial. We intend to seek review of that issue in the Supreme Court of the United States, and have no doubt that our client will eventually be fully vindicated.”
Mayling C. Blanco and Michael Martinez, lawyers for Full Play, did not respond to emails from the AP seeking comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York had no comment.
Dozens of people have pleaded guilty or been convicted after a U.S.-led investigation into FIFA and international soccer. The probe became public in 2015 when U.S. prosecutors accused the leaders of soccer federations of tarnishing the sport for nearly a quarter-century by taking $150 million in bribes and payoffs.
“Corruption in international soccer is not new,” the circuit court wrote. “It was rampant for decades before the events at issue here.”
Fox Corp., which split from a subsidiary of international channels during a restructuring in 2019, was not charged and has denied any involvement in the bribery scandal.
