A Las Vegas jury has found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur, delivering the first conviction in a case that remained unsolved for nearly three decades.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours Monday before convicting the 63-year-old former gang leader of murder with the use of a deadly weapon. Davis was the only person ever charged in Shakur’s killing. He now faces the possibility of life in prison, with sentencing scheduled for October 13.
A judge had set Davis’s bail at $750,000 in 2024, with house arrest and electronic monitoring as conditions of release. Davis remained in custody through his trial and is now being held without bail following his guilty verdict.
Prosecutors did not accuse Davis of firing the shots that killed Shakur. Instead, they argued that he orchestrated the attack, obtained the gun used in the shooting and provided it to others in the white Cadillac that pulled alongside the car carrying Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight on September 7, 1996. Shakur, who was 25, was shot multiple times and died six days later.
Much of the prosecution’s case was built around Davis’s own words. Over the years, he discussed the killing in interviews, conversations with investigators and his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. Prosecutors said his accounts repeatedly placed him inside the Cadillac and described his role in obtaining and passing along the gun. Davis’s defense argued that he had exaggerated or fabricated those accounts for money and notoriety and emphasized the lack of physical evidence directly tying him to the scene.
The verdict closes a major chapter in one of the most enduring murder cases in American music history. Shakur was already one of hip-hop’s biggest stars when he was killed, and the absence of a prosecution for decades fueled speculation about what happened and whether anyone would ever be held criminally responsible. Davis told the judge after the verdict that he intends to appeal his conviction.
