A Las Vegas jury ended the Tupac murder trial on Monday by convicting Duane “Keffe D” Davis of first-degree murder, the first conviction anyone has ever faced in the rapper’s 1996 killing. Davis, 63, was found guilty of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further, or assist a criminal gang. The panel of 10 women and six men reached that decision in under three hours after sitting through roughly two weeks of testimony.
Prosecutors never claimed Davis pulled the trigger. Their case was that he organized the shooting, supplied the weapon, and gave the order. Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis got a gun and “went hunting” for Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight.
Shakur was shot on September 7, 1996, in a car near the Las Vegas Strip and died six days later. Hours before the shooting, Davis’ nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson had been jumped by Shakur and members of his circle. Davis was a leader in the South Side Compton Crips. Shakur was traveling with Mob Piru affiliates. What happened that night sat on top of a violent rivalry between those two sets, and prosecutors argued the shooting was payback.
The evidence that carried the Tupac murder trial came almost entirely from Davis himself. Jurors heard a 2008 police interview in which he said he provided the gun and that Anderson was the one who fired. They heard about the 2019 memoir where he laid out the same account. They heard about the television interviews, the YouTube sit downs, and the years he spent telling anyone who would listen that he was there and that he made it happen. Palal’s closing argument was built around that record, and he asked the jury to take Davis at his word and convict him.
Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued the opposite. His position was that confessions alone are not proof, that there was no physical evidence or living eyewitness tying his client to the crime, and that Davis said what he said to sell books and stay relevant. During opening statements the defense flatly called the claims lies, pointing out that Davis was never charged during all those years of talking. Davis’ lawyers had also fought to keep the statements out of the trial entirely and lost that fight before testimony began.
Nevada law is what made the case possible. In that state, a person who helps someone else commit a murder can be convicted of the murder itself, whether or not they fired a shot. That is why prosecutors could build the Tupac murder trial around a man sitting in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac.
The charge also carried what is called a gang enhancement, which is an add on to a criminal charge that increases the penalty when the crime is committed to benefit a gang. On Monday evening the state said it would drop that portion of the charge, citing logistical problems with witnesses. The murder conviction stands regardless.
The prosecution called more than two dozen witnesses, most of them former investigators and law enforcement officers who worked the case over three decades. The defense called three. Part of why the witness list leaned so heavily on police is that the other men who were in the car have since died, leaving Davis as the only living passenger and the only person ever charged in the case. He was arrested in 2023, 27 years after the shooting.
The courtroom reaction was immediate. Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, cried and reached back toward someone seated behind her as the verdict was read. Davis’ son covered his face with one hand. Davis himself stayed straight faced through the reading, then raised his fist briefly toward the audience as he was walked out.
District Judge Carli Kierny ordered him held in jail until sentencing on October 13. He faces a maximum of life in prison. Davis has already signaled that he intends to appeal.
For 30 years the killing of Tupac Shakur sat in the category of cases that everyone had a theory about and no one could close. Names circulated for decades. Documentaries were made. The man at the center of it published a book about his own involvement and went on camera to talk about it more than once. Monday’s verdict in the Tupac murder trial did not answer every question about that night, but it produced the one thing three decades of speculation never could, which is a conviction.
