There is element of Ethics Villain Anthony Fauci in the story as well. (I think that’s how I will type his name forever; I hope you don’t mind.) In 2008 and 2009, investigators convinced Davis , who had already spent years in prison for other crimes, to tell them what he knew about Tupac’s murder. He ultimately become a confidential informant, under the threat of new charges. Because authorities assured him that nothing he told them would be used against him, Davis assumed he had immunity for whatever he published in his book.

Big mistake! Then he had an interview included in a 2018 BET docuseries, and published and promoted his memoir (or “memoir”). At a hearing last month, Marc DiGiacomo, prosecuting Davis, stated, “Had he never decided to take money and go on BET and talk about this situation, had he decided to never write the book, he would not, probably, have ever been prosecuted for the crime.” Davis now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors concede that the book is “prone to hyperbole,” but claim its narrative is similar enough to the 2008 interview with investigators and his other interviews around the book’s release to get a jury to find him guilty. Davis’s attorneys argue that the book was ghostwritten (the actual writer doubts he even read it) and was concocted to cash in on the public’s fascination with the Tupac murder mystery. “I just did it for the money,” Davis says. He also argues that details like quotes from famous people in the book prove he had no part in its authorship. “I don’t know nothing about no Winston Churchill,” he says.

I guess I’m missing something, or an old bias from my mercifully brief stint as a criminal defense attorney has resurfaced for some reason. I don’t see why a prosecution based substantially on a habitual criminal’s memoir, authored by a third party, doesn’t automatically fail to pass the requirement of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s not as if the incriminating evidence was in, say, a diary, just to pick an example out of the air. Jason Arday’s new book will make the point vividly, and he’s not even a rapper. More public figures lie in their memoirs than not, in all likelihood. Presidents do it. Clarence Darrow did it. I wrote on the old Ethics Scoreboard about the infamous case where a novelist who couldn’t get his novel published turned it into a fake memoir and it became a best-seller, in part because he fooled Oprah Winfrey.

Davis may have helped kill Tupac; heck, he probably did, to paraphrase Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) in “Twelve Angry Men.” Nonetheless, his case screams “not guilty” because of reasonable doubt.

And I think Winston Churchill would agree with me.

[You can read the New York Times account of the case at a gift link here.]