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| Duane “Keffe D” Davis, shown in a 2023 booking photo, was found guilty Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. The Las Vegas jury deliberated for less than three hours before convicting Davis, the only person ever charged in the nearly 30-year-old case. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department) |
Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down on a Las Vegas street, the only person ever charged in his killing has been convicted of murder.
A Las Vegas jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon Monday, delivering the first criminal conviction in a case that spent decades as one of hip-hop’s most infamous unsolved killings.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours.
Davis, 63, was not accused of firing the shots that killed Shakur. Prosecutors instead argued that the former South Side Compton Crips leader helped organize the retaliatory attack and provided the gun used in the shooting.
Under Nevada law, prosecutors did not have to prove Davis pulled the trigger to hold him criminally responsible for Shakur’s death.
The verdict caps a case with an unusual history: For years, authorities could not bring charges in Shakur’s killing. Then Davis began publicly telling the story himself.
His accounts in interviews, a documentary, conversations with investigators and his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” eventually became central to the prosecution’s case against him.
Shakur was shot Sept. 7, 1996, after attending a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Earlier that night, Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight and others encountered Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, inside the hotel. Surveillance video captured Shakur and members of his entourage attacking Anderson.
Prosecutors argued that the beating set a revenge plot in motion.
Davis and three other men got into a white Cadillac and went looking for Shakur and Knight, prosecutors said. They eventually found the pair in a BMW stopped near the Las Vegas Strip.
Someone inside the Cadillac opened fire.
Shakur was struck multiple times. Knight was wounded but survived.
Shakur died six days later at a Las Vegas hospital. He was 25.
Davis has acknowledged being in the Cadillac but maintained that he was not the shooter. In previous accounts, he described passing a gun toward the vehicle’s back seat.
Prosecutors used those accounts to argue that Davis was not merely a witness to the killing but an active participant in it.
During closing arguments Monday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that determining who actually pulled the trigger was not necessary to determine Davis’ guilt.
The defense offered a striking counterargument: Davis could not be trusted.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued that Davis embellished or fabricated portions of his accounts and that prosecutors lacked physical evidence independently tying him to the murder. The defense also pointed to inconsistencies in Davis’ various versions of what happened that night.
That argument required jurors to consider whether the man who spent years publicly describing his presence in the car and his involvement in the events surrounding Shakur’s death had been telling the truth then — or was telling the truth now when he denied criminal responsibility.
The jury sided with prosecutors.
The conviction provides a courtroom resolution to a killing that became inseparable from the mythology surrounding one of rap’s most influential artists.
Shakur was already a major star when he was killed, but 1996 had pushed his career to another level. His fourth studio album, “All Eyez on Me,” had arrived in February as a sprawling double album featuring “California Love,” “How Do U Want It” and “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.”
His death also came during a turbulent period in hip-hop, amid the heavily publicized rivalry involving artists and labels associated with the East and West coasts.
For years afterward, theories about Shakur’s killing flourished while the case remained officially unresolved.
Davis increasingly inserted himself into that history.
A once-secret 2008 interview with investigators became particularly important at trial. Davis spoke to authorities while they were investigating the killing of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., who was fatally shot in Los Angeles six months after Shakur’s death.
Davis later discussed the Shakur shooting publicly, including in the 2018 documentary series “Death Row Chronicles” and in “Compton Street Legend,” published the following year.
Those public disclosures ultimately helped investigators take another look at the long-dormant case.
Las Vegas police arrested Davis in September 2023 after a grand jury indicted him on a murder charge.
By then, the three other men authorities identified as occupants of the Cadillac were dead, leaving Davis as the only person from the vehicle who could face prosecution.
Three decades after the gunfire that killed Shakur, a jury has now held him criminally responsible.
Davis faces the possibility of life in prison.
