A Las Vegas jury has found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of orchestrating the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, bringing the nearly three-decade-old case to its first conviction.
According to the Associated Press, the 63-year-old Davis was convicted Monday of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon following a weekslong trial in Las Vegas. Jurors deliberated for less than three hours before reaching the verdict. Davis could face life in prison.
Shakur was shot multiple times on Sept. 7, 1996, while riding in a BMW with Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight. A white Cadillac pulled alongside the vehicle at a Las Vegas intersection before gunfire erupted. Shakur died six days later at age 25, while Knight survived.
Prosecutors argued that Davis helped organize the attack, which stemmed from a confrontation earlier that night involving Shakur, Knight and Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson. The incident was linked to a longstanding rivalry between the Mob Piru Bloods, with which Shakur and Knight were affiliated, and the South Side Compton Crips, for which Davis was a prominent leader.
The case remained unsolved for decades before renewed attention focused on Davis following public interviews, law enforcement statements and his 2019 memoir. Prosecutors relied heavily on Davis’ own past statements about the shooting, while his defense argued that his accounts had been exaggerated for financial gain.
Davis is the only surviving person who was in the white Cadillac at the time of the shooting. His conviction marks the first criminal conviction in the case that has remained one of hip-hop’s most closely followed unsolved killings.
