A Nevada jury has convicted the man accused in the killing of Tupac Shakur, closing a major chapter in one of the entertainment world’s most enduring and closely watched murder cases.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, heard the verdict Monday in a Las Vegas courtroom following a trial that lasted roughly two weeks.
Davis, described as a former senior “shot caller” in a Los Angeles-based Crips faction, is the first person to be held legally accountable for Shakur’s death, which stemmed from a drive-by shooting on a Las Vegas street on Sept. 7, 1996.
Shakur, a defining voice in the rise of 1990s hip-hop, was riding in a car when another vehicle pulled alongside and gunfire erupted. He died several days later at age 25.
Prosecutors did not allege that Davis personally fired the weapon that killed Shakur. Instead, they argued he supplied the gun to the shooter — widely believed to have been his nephew, Orlando Anderson, who was killed in a gang-related shootout two years later — and helped plan the attack.
They came to that conclusion largely from Davis’ own words — he apparently owned up to it while trying to dodge potential charges in 2008, and later detailed the entire plot in a 2019 memoir that ended up leading straight to his 2023 arrest.
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Davis’ defense, however, argued those admissions were pure falsehoods — with attorney Michael Sanft characterizing the memoir as historical fiction, even going so far to compare it to the movie “Titanic.”
“Has anybody seen the documentary called ‘Titanic,’ with Jack and Rose?” Sanft jibbed during closing statements.
But prosecutors argued Davis’ own statements were just the icing on the cake — saying the case was “drenched with circumstantial evidence” placing him in the middle of the crime.
His nephew had been beaten up by Shakur — said to be affiliated with a rival Blood gang — just hours before the killing, which prosecutors argued necessitated a violent response by unspoken gangland rules.
“That was the nature of the gang life in the 1990s in Compton – you had no choice, you could not go back to Compton after being beaten publicly,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal said during his closing arguments.
That response was organized by an enraged Davis, who Palal said “got a gun and went hunting for Tupac Shakur.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.