A Las Vegas jury on Monday found former Los Angeles gang member Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder in the 1996 shooting death of rap icon Tupac Shakur.
After deliberating for only a few hours, the panel convicted the 63-year-old of murder with use of a deadly weapon. Davis, once a leader of the South Side Compton Crips, now faces a possible sentence of life in prison without parole. Sentencing is scheduled for October 13.
“Count one, murder with use of a deadly weapon, guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon,” the jury foreperson announced in Clark County District Court.
Davis told Judge Carli Kierny he intends to appeal.
Prosecutors said Davis ordered the attack after his nephew was beaten by members of Shakur’s entourage at a Las Vegas casino on September 7, 1996. Shakur was in town for a Mike Tyson fight.
“Duane Davis, in the culture of gangs, could not let that stand,” prosecutor Binu Palal told the jury in closing arguments. “So what did he do? He acquired a firearm, got his group together, and went hunting for Mr. Shakur.”
About two hours after the casino altercation, a white Cadillac pulled alongside the BMW carrying Shakur at a red light. Gunfire erupted. Shakur, riding in the front passenger seat, was hit multiple times and died six days later at age 25. Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, who was driving the BMW, was also wounded.
Prosecutors alleged Davis handed a gun to a passenger in the back seat of the Cadillac and ordered the shooting. Davis is the only person known to have been in that Cadillac who is still alive. He is also the only person ever charged in connection with the killing.
The case remained one of America’s most famous unsolved murders for nearly three decades, fueling endless speculation among fans about who killed the East Coast-raised, West Coast-celebrated star of hits including “California Love” and “All Eyez on Me.”
Investigators long lacked hard evidence until Davis’s own words revived the case. In interviews with police and media, and later in his 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend, Davis repeatedly claimed involvement in the murder. He later recanted and pleaded not guilty.
During the trial, prosecutors played clips of those statements. Defense attorney Michael Sanft dismissed them as fiction designed to sell books.
“You’re reading a book that is fiction and not fact,” Sanft told the jury. “But the state wants you to believe that this is somehow a confession.”
He argued that no physical evidence linked Davis to the crime beyond his own statements. Pretrial efforts by the defense to exclude the book and a 2008 police interview failed.
The conviction closes a chapter on one of hip-hop’s defining tragedies and the violent East Coast–West Coast rivalry that marked the mid-1990s.
