Nearly three decades after Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in Las Vegas, a jury has convicted 63-year-old Duane “Keffe D” Davis in the rap legend’s murder.
Shakur was shot on the night of September 7, 1996, while riding in a black BMW driven by Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight. The pair were stopped at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled up beside them and gunmen opened fire. Shakur, one of hip-hop’s most influential figures, died six days later from his injuries.
According to ABC News, jurors deliberated for less than three hours before reaching a unanimous verdict. Davis was found guilty of murder with the use of a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang.
Prosecutors have said Davis was not the person who fired the fatal shots in the drive-by attack. They argued the gunman was either his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, or another passenger seated in the back of the Cadillac.
Authorities instead portrayed Davis, an admitted longtime leader of a Los Angeles street gang, as the organizer behind the killing. Police and prosecutors alleged he acted as the “shot caller” and supplied the weapon used in Shakur’s murder.
The other three men who allegedly participated in the shooting have all since died. According to the Associated Press, prosecutors presented mounds of evidence linking Davis to the crime, including his own confessions in his memoirs and on tape.
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Davis co-authored “Compton Street Legend,” a book about the shooting and Davis’ time in the Crips gang.
His attorneys unsuccessfully fought to block the book’s use at trial. They argued it was fictionalized, and that because it had a co-author, it’s impossible to know which portions Davis wrote.
The memoir says Shakur and his entourage “crossed the line” when they beat up Davis’ nephew at a Las Vegas casino. Prosecutors have alleged Davis’ anger over the beating is part of what motivated the shooting. However, they have decided to focus more on Davis’ documentary and police interviews rather than his book.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that even Davis did not pull the trigger in the murder of Tupac Shakur, he did “plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew.”
In a 2008 interview with the FBI during an investigation into the killing of rapper Notorious B.I.G., Tupac’s chief rival, Davis said on tape that he remembered handing a gun to the men in the backseat of a white Cadillac before the drive-by shooting that killed Tupac Shakur and wounded Marion “Suge” Knight.
Davis faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. He is the only individual tried and convicted for the murder of Tupac.