A Las Vegas jury has found Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a 63-year-old former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon for orchestrating the 1996 killing of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur. The verdict, reached after less than three hours of deliberation following a nine-day trial, closes one of American popular culture's most enduring cold cases. Davis faces a possible sentence of life in prison without parole; sentencing is scheduled for October.

Shakur, who was 25 years old at the time of his death, was shot on September 7, 1996, while riding in a BMW through Las Vegas after attending a Mike Tyson heavyweight boxing match. A white Cadillac pulled up alongside him at a red light and opened fire. He died six days later in hospital. The driver of his vehicle, Death Row Records co-founder Marion "Suge" Knight, was wounded but survived. Prosecutors argued that Davis, seated in the front of the Cadillac, handed a pistol to someone in the back seat and gave the order to shoot — a revenge killing triggered by an earlier that evening brawl at a Las Vegas casino in which Shakur's entourage had beaten Davis's nephew, Orlando Anderson. Davis was not accused of pulling the trigger himself; every other person alleged to have been in the Cadillac that night has since died.

The prosecution's case rested heavily on Davis's own words. Over the years, Davis had spoken to law enforcement — including during a 2008 drug investigation in which he volunteered information about Shakur's murder in exchange for leniency — given media interviews, and in 2019 published a memoir titled "Compton Street Legend" in which he recounted being present in the Cadillac and passing the gun. A scrapbook he kept of news articles about Shakur was also entered into evidence. Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis had "acquired a firearm, got his group together, and went hunting for Mr. Shakur," adding that Davis's "arrogance and celebration of that murder is ultimately what did him in."

The defence countered that Davis was a fabricator motivated by financial gain. Attorney Michael Sanft argued that his client's statements were "dramatized bravado" intended to sell books and boost his public profile, not truthful accounts of events. "You're reading a book that is fiction and not fact," Sanft told the jury. He stressed that there was no physical evidence linking Davis to the shooting, only his own shifting and self-serving statements. After the verdict was read, Shakur's sister, Sekyiwa "Set" Shakur, wept and embraced the prosecutors.

At the time of his murder, Tupac Shakur was arguably the most prominent rapper in the world — the son of a Black Panther activist, raised in Harlem and Baltimore before becoming the defining voice of West Coast hip-hop through his association with Los Angeles-based Death Row Records. His double album "All Eyez on Me" had recently been released, and he had starred in several major films. His killing, and the unsolved murder of East Coast rival The Notorious B.I.G. six months later, came to symbolise a violent and destructive rivalry between hip-hop's two coasts. Davis is the only person ever to have been charged in connection with Shakur's death.