A Las Vegas jury on Monday convicted Duane "Keffe D" Davis of murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur, delivering the first conviction in a case that had gone unsolved for nearly three decades and defined one of hip-hop's most enduring mysteries.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours after weeks of testimony before finding Davis, 63, guilty of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote, further or assist criminal gang activity. He faces a potential life sentence at his Oct. 13 hearing; a district judge ordered him held in jail until then.
Shakur was shot on Sept. 7, 1996, while stopped at a red light on the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled alongside his vehicle and gunfire erupted. He died six days later at age 25. Marion "Suge" Knight, the Death Row Records executive riding with him, was wounded but survived. Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, was the last living person prosecutors say was in the Cadillac that night, and he was not accused of firing the fatal shots himself but of orchestrating the ambush.
Prosecutor Binu Palal told jurors Davis "went hunting" for Shakur after an earlier physical altercation between the rapper's entourage and Davis's nephew at a Las Vegas casino hours before the shooting. Defense attorney Michael Sanft had pushed back hard on the state's case.
"They have nothing in this case that says that man was here."
Michael Sanft, defense attorney for Duane Davis
The verdict brought an emotional close to a case that outlived several of its central figures. Shakur's sister, Sekyiwa "Set" Shakur, cried in the courtroom as the verdict was read; Davis's son sat with his face in his hands. Davis himself drew renewed scrutiny after describing his own alleged role in the killing in a 2019 memoir and later television interviews, statements that helped lead to his arrest in September 2023 and that prosecutors used to build their case.
With sentencing still weeks away, the case is likely headed for appeal. But for a murder that shadowed the music industry for a generation, Monday's verdict marked the first time anyone has been held criminally responsible for Shakur's death.
