A Las Vegas jury has convicted Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a 63-year-old former gang leader, of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon for orchestrating the 1996 killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur — the first conviction in a case that has gripped hip-hop fans and true crime observers for nearly three decades. The jury reached its verdict in less than three hours after a two-week trial, ending a long wait for resolution in one of the most famous unsolved cases in American music history. Davis now faces a potential sentence of life in prison; sentencing has been set for 13 October. After the verdict was read, Shakur's sister, Sekyiwa "Set" Shakur, wept and embraced prosecutors in the courtroom. Davis announced his intention to appeal.

Shakur, widely regarded as one of the most influential rappers of all time, was 25 years old when he was shot on the night of 7 September 1996 in Las Vegas, Nevada, after attending a Mike Tyson boxing match at the MGM Grand hotel. As the vehicle he shared with Death Row Records co-founder Marion "Suge" Knight waited at a red light, a white Cadillac pulled alongside and shots were fired. Shakur died from his wounds six days later. Knight survived but was also wounded. No arrests were made for years, and the Las Vegas Police Department faced lasting criticism for mishandling the investigation. The killing was long associated with the fierce East Coast–West Coast rivalry in hip-hop, and in particular with the feud between Shakur and Brooklyn rapper Christopher Wallace — known as the Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls — who was himself murdered in Los Angeles six months later.

Prosecutors argued that the shooting was an act of premeditated retaliation. Earlier that evening, Shakur and members of his entourage had beaten Davis's nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, in a hotel lobby brawl. Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis — described by a gang expert as a "shot caller" whose orders younger South Side Compton Crips members were expected to obey — then acquired a firearm and led a search for Shakur and Knight. "He acquired the gun, organised the group and went hunting for Mr. Shakur," Palal said, characterising the attack as a plan rather than an impulse. Prosecutors did not argue that Davis pulled the trigger himself, but held him criminally responsible under Nevada law for providing the weapon and directing the attack. The three other men believed to have been in the white Cadillac that night are all dead.

The case ultimately turned on Davis's own words. In a 2008 interview with investigators — conducted under a partial immunity agreement that initially shielded him from prosecution — Davis admitted to being in the Cadillac. He subsequently gave numerous media interviews and, in 2019, published a memoir titled Compton Street Legend in which he described passing a Glock pistol to the back seat as the group caught up with Shakur. "It was the first and only time in my life that I could relate to the police command to 'Keep your hands where I can see them,'" Davis wrote of the moments before the shooting. Prosecutors displayed the memoir repeatedly in court, arguing it amounted to a confession. "Had he decided to never write the book, he would not, probably, have ever been prosecuted for the crime," prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo noted. Defence attorney Michael Sanft countered that Davis had embellished his account to boost book sales, that the memoir was fiction rather than fact, and that no physical evidence — the weapon and the Cadillac were never recovered — placed Davis in Las Vegas that night.

The conviction brings a measure of closure to Shakur's family and to the broader hip-hop community, though Davis's announced appeal means the legal process is not yet over. Shakur's cousin Zayd Akinyela had told reporters during the trial, "We've been waiting 30 years to grieve properly." Shakur, the son of Black Panther party activists, had sold tens of millions of records and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. His death at the height of his cultural influence transformed him into an enduring icon, and the unresolved circumstances of that death had for decades fuelled speculation, conspiracy theories, and a cottage industry of books and documentaries. The conviction does not answer every question — the identity of the person who fired the shots remains officially unnamed — but it marks the first time anyone has been held legally accountable for one of popular music's most notorious cold cases.