A jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of orchestrating the 1996 killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur, finally bringing a measure of resolution to a case that had gripped hip-hop fans and lingered in the public imagination for decades.

The 63-year-old Davis was convicted on Monday (August 31, 2026) of a single count of murder with a deadly weapon and could be sentenced to life in prison. The jury deliberated for less than 3 hours after a weekslong trial in Las Vegas.

After the verdict was read, Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, cried and hugged the prosecutors. Davis’ son covered his face with one hand.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors in closing arguments earlier on Monday (August 31, 2026) that Davis acquired a gun and “went hunting” for Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight after the men had beat up Davis’ nephew earlier that night.

“He is responsible of the murder of Tupac Shakur,” Mr. Palal said. “Tell him you hear him. Find him guilty.” Prosecutors said that while his story had changed over the years, Davis repeatedly placed himself inside a white Cadillac from which the shots were fired. And they said that while he did not pull the trigger, evidence showed he’d called for the gunfire as a powerful gang leader the younger men in the car, including his nephew, were going to listen to.

Defence attorney Michael Sanft asked jurors if there was any evidence that Davis had ever called the shots before or after the shooting.

The panel of 16 jurors, four of whom are alternates, heard testimony from 24 prosecution witnesses and three defence witnesses over nine days.

The prosecution said the state would dismiss a gang enhancement charge due to witness logistics.

The decades-old case has drawn the attention of hip-hop fans and crime experts alike

The trial brought to a head a decades-old case that for years has drawn the attention of hip-hop fans and true crime experts alike. Shakur, who was considered one of the most influential rappers of all time, was in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, and stopped at a red light when a white Cadillac pulled up beside him, and shots were fired. He died six days later from his wounds. Mr. Knight was also wounded but survived.

For years, nobody had been charged in the rapper’s death until Davis began making public statements, saying he was in the Cadillac and gave the gun to others in the backseat, calling the shooting retaliation for the earlier beating of his nephew. Davis was the only person still alive among the four men prosecutors say were in the Cadillac.

Witnesses described the hostile rivalry between the Los Angeles gang sects Mob Piru, and Davis’ Southside Compton Crips leading up to Shakur’s death, and how the gangs became affiliated with Knight’s Death Row Records and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records.

Defence argues public statements were untrue, and physical evidence was lacking

Mr. Sanft, Davis’ attorney, argued there was no physical evidence connecting his client to the shooting. He said the book Davis co-authored and the public statements he made were dramatised bravado designed to make money, not to tell the truth.

Throughout the trial, Mr. Sanft poked holes in prosecutors’ narrative. He said investigators did not back up the claims made by his client, and he repeatedly pointed out a lack of physical evidence, such as phone records, that showed Davis was the shot caller.

“They have nothing in this case that says that man was here in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996,” Mr. Sanft said during his closing argument.

In a rebuttal argument, prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo pointed to a scrapbook Davis kept containing articles about Shakur.

“This guy’s scrapbooking his murder, for God’s sake,” Mr. DiGiacomo told jurors.

Davis’ own words are front and centre

Mr. Palal held up Davis’ 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” and played an interview in which Davis encouraged people to buy it to get the “real truth.” Although the book contains a disclaimer saying some facts were changed, prosecutors argued the central account did not.

Mr. Sanft also turned to his client’s memoir during his closing argument. While reading an excerpt, he said the N-word aloud, prompting people watching in an overflow courtroom to recoil and shake their heads.

In multiple interviews, Davis said he handed the gun to the back seat, but in others as well as in his book, Davis wouldn’t say who pulled the trigger.

Gang and record label rivalries provide the backdrop

While insisting Davis’ words alone were enough to convict him, prosecutors said a gang rivalry helped explain why the shooting happened.

Witnesses described the hostile rivalry between the Los Angeles gang sects Mob Piru and Davis’ South Side Compton Crips leading up to Shakur’s death, and how the gangs became affiliated with two rival labels — Mob Piru with Knight’s Death Row Records and the South Side Compton Crips with Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records.

The shooting death of Bad Boy’s The Notorious B.I.G. six months after Shakur came up many times during the trial, with law enforcement witnesses saying Davis was briefly a suspect in that killing before being discounted. That case, which has also been an obsession of hip-hop fans, remains unsolved.

Published – September 01, 2026 08:07 am IST

A former gang leader goes on trial Monday (August 10, 2026) in Las Vegas, U.S., over the decades-old murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, one of America’s most high-profile unresolved murders.

The proceedings, expected to last a month, will likely not make clear who fired the shots that killed the hip-hop legend on the night of September 7, 1996 while he was in Sin City to see a Mike Tyson boxing match.

But prosecutors aim to show that the defendant, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the onetime leader of the South Side Compton Crips, ordered the killing and provided the gun used to kill Shakur in a drive-by shooting.

Mr. Davis, 63, faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

The killing of Shakur, also known as 2Pac, is one of America’s most celebrated cold cases, prompting endless debate among music fans over who did it and why.

The rapper, who died at age 25, was a key figure in a hip-hop rivalry pitting the East Coast against the West Coast.

Known for hits like “California Love” and “All Eyez on Me,” Shakur — the son of a Black Panther — was raised in Harlem and Baltimore, but quickly became the epitome of a California bad boy when he signed with Los-Angeles based Death Row Records.

The trial will revisit the battle between Death Row, founded by Marion “Suge” Knight, and Bad Boy Records, the East Coast label created by Sean “Diddy” Combs and starring Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace (murdered in March 1997).

Prosecutors say Death Row Records was protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang that was part of the wider Bloods alliance. Knight was affiliated with the group.

Bad Boy Records had hired the rival group South Side Compton Crips, led by Davis, as bodyguards.

After the Tyson fight at the MGM Grand casino, Knight and Shakur beat up Mr. Davis’s nephew, Crips member Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, in retribution over an alleged assault of a Death Row employee.

Mr. Davis was out for revenge, the prosecution says.

Later that night, a white Cadillac carrying Mr. Davis, Mr. Anderson and others pulled up beside Shakur’s car in Las Vegas. Shots were fired from the Cadillac, and Shakur was fatally wounded.

Compromising memoirs

The investigation sputtered for decades because of a lack of evidence, but the cold case was revived with the publication in 2019 of Mr. Davis’s memoirs.

In that book, Mr. Davis recounted that he was in the front seat of the Cadillac and that he handed a pistol to those in the back seat. But he does not say who opened fire on Shakur. Everyone else who was in the Cadillac that night has since died.

These compromising revelations were consistent with remarks Mr. Davis had made previously to reporters. But this time, they came back to haunt him and he was arrested in September 2023.

Mr. Davis has since backtracked and pleaded not guilty.

“I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody. Never did ever kill nobody,” Mr. Davis said in March 2025 in an interview from prison with ABC News. “They don’t have no evidence against me. They can’t even put me in Las Vegas.”

Mr. Davis now says he was in Los Angeles the night of the Shakur killing and that he has never even read his own memoirs. He asserted that these were inflated by his co-author to generate book sales.

“I just gave him details of my life,” Mr. Davis said. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.”

In the run-up to the trial, Mr. Davis’s lawyers tried in vain to keep the book from being introduced as evidence, along with remarks he made in an interview with police in 2008 as a witness to the killing.

The proceedings will open with jury selection, which is expected to take a week.

Whatever the verdict is, it is unlikely to satisfy those close to Shakur.

In May, the rapper’s stepbrother Maurice Shakur filed a wrongful death lawsuit in civil court.

“There remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes,” his complaint says.

The suit cites a recent TV documentary mini- series entitled “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” in which Davis says in an interview with police that Combs, now in prison himself, offered him $1 million to kill Shakur.

Published – August 10, 2026 08:10 am IST