A Las Vegas jury convicted Duane “Keffe D” Davis on Monday of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, ending nearly three decades without any conviction in one of the city’s most notorious unsolved crimes.
Jurors deliberated less than three hours before reaching the verdict. Davis, 63, was ordered held without bail and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 13. He faces the possibility of life in prison.
Shakur, 25, was shot while riding in a car near the Las Vegas Strip on Sept. 7, 1996. He died days later. Marion “Suge” Knight, the Death Row Records co-founder who was in the car with Shakur, was not among those charged and did not give investigators an account that led to charges against anyone else.
Davis’s own words became the case
Prosecutors said the strongest evidence against Davis came from Davis himself. Over the years he described his involvement in interviews with law enforcement, in documentaries, in public interviews and in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend.”
Davis told investigators in 2008 that he was in the front passenger seat of a white Cadillac with three other men, including his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, when they spotted Shakur and Knight’s BMW, made a U-turn and pulled alongside it.
“If we would have been on my side, I would have blasted,” Davis told investigators, according to testimony presented at trial.
Davis said he instead passed a gun to the backseat before shots were fired. Prosecutors did not accuse Davis of firing the fatal shots. Instead, they argued he organized the group, supplied the weapon and helped carry out a retaliatory attack after Shakur and Knight’s entourage beat Anderson at the MGM Grand earlier that same night. Under Nevada law, a person who aids or assists in a murder can be held criminally responsible for it.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors during closing arguments that Davis’s account of the events changed in some details over the years but that the essential story never wavered.
“The core facts remain. The material facts remain,” Palal told jurors.
Why it took nearly 30 years
Investigators had long suspected the shooting was retaliation for the MGM Grand fight, but building a prosecutable case proved difficult for years. Witnesses were reluctant to talk, and others believed to have been in the Cadillac died before charges were filed.
Davis spoke to investigators off the record in 2008 under an agreement with federal authorities and again with Las Vegas police in 2009, circumstances that complicated whether those statements could later be used against him. But once Davis began discussing the killing publicly — in documentaries, interviews and his memoir — prosecutors argued they could use his earlier statements as evidence. A renewed Las Vegas police investigation led to Davis’s arrest in 2023.
The defense’s argument
Defense attorney Michael Sanft told jurors that Davis had exaggerated or invented his role in the killing for money and attention, describing his client’s public statements as braggadocio rather than confession.
Sanft argued prosecutors never independently proved Davis was even in Las Vegas the night of the shooting, noting the absence of surveillance footage, phone records or other physical evidence placing him in the Cadillac.
“They have nothing in this case that says that man was here in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996,” Sanft told jurors, pointing at Davis during closing arguments.
Sanft also challenged the reliability of the decades-old investigation, citing missing records and the involvement of multiple law enforcement agencies over the years.
Prosecutors responded that Davis’s own admissions did not need independent corroboration if jurors found them credible, and pointed to circumstantial evidence — including the MGM Grand beating and the rivalry between the two groups — supporting his account.
What happens next
After the verdict, Judge Carli Kierny ordered Davis held without bail pending sentencing. Davis asked the court for the return of jewelry, a phone and other personal belongings, and told the judge, “And I would like to appeal this matter.” Kierny said an appeal would follow sentencing.
Prosecutors also voluntarily dropped an additional prison-term allegation tied to gang activity, citing logistical issues involving a witness, which removed the need for a separate phase of the trial.
