The former Compton gang leader charged with orchestrating the 1996 drive-by shooting of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur was convicted of first-degree murder by a Las Vegas jury on Monday, marking a long-awaited reckoning in one of the most notorious unsolved killings in music history.
Jurors needed only about three hours to return their verdict against Duane “Keffe D” Davis in the nearly 30-year-old killing. Davis, who did not testify, is set to be sentenced on October 13 and faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Shortly after hearing the verdict, Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa, embraced a man seated behind her and wiped her eyes with a tissue, according to a live feed of the proceeding from The Associated Press.
Before court adjourned, Davis raised his hand and told the court he wanted his electronics back and planned to appeal. The judge said any appeal “happens after sentencing,” and she ordered him held without bail.
Davis, 63, had pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon. His defense lawyer, Michael Sanft, argued the state’s case was built on “lies” that Davis first told prosecutors to avoid prison on narcotics charges and later repeated in interviews and in his memoir, Compton Street Legend, for profit. Davis was arrested in September 2023 and remained in custody through the trial.
In his closing argument, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal accused Davis of organizing the Sept. 7, 1996, shooting as “gang retaliation” for a beating that took place about two hours earlier inside the MGM Grand casino. He said Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, and others attacked Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson, after their Death Row associate Trevon Lane spotted Anderson in the casino following a Mike Tyson fight.
During the trial, jurors heard the confrontation grew out of an earlier gang dispute involving Davis’ and Anderson’s South Side Compton Crips and the rival Mob Piru Bloods, whose members included Lane and others associated with Death Row. They heard Lane had a run-in with Anderson and other Crips at a mall near Compton about two months before Shakur’s shooting, and that someone allegedly stole a chain bearing a Death Row medallion. Admitted Crips member Denvonta Lee testified under a court order and told jurors he was there when the mall brawl “broke out” and the chain “came off” Lane’s neck.
Palal said the alleged chain theft was viewed as “an ultimate sign of disrespect,” demanding retribution and culminating in the MGM Grand beating of Anderson captured on surveillance video.
The centerpiece of the prosecution’s case was the “secret” recorded interview Davis gave to police in 2008 in which he described his role in the shooting in extraordinary detail. Prosecutors characterized the account as a confession and said the fact that Davis was trying to gain leverage in an unrelated narcotics case didn’t diminish its significance.
In his dueling closing argument, Sanft disputed that characterization, saying Davis had fabricated the account and that his retellings over the years often conflicted with one another and, at times, with the evidence. He pointed, for example, to a passage in Davis’s book claiming that a Chrysler Sebring filled with women followed his Cadillac after the shooting and was struck by gunfire that shattered a window. A woman from the Sebring testified during the trial that the car was never hit and no glass was shattered.
“The state wants you to believe this was a confession,” Sanft said of his client’s account in the 2008 interview. “We’re presuming all this stuff. … We can’t put Orlando in the car. We can’t even put Davis in Las Vegas.”
In the state’s final rebuttal before jurors began deliberating Monday afternoon, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo dismissed Sanft’s argument that inconsistencies in Davis’ accounts undermined the prosecution’s case.
“Do we honestly think a guy who was dumb enough to write a book could keep this story straight this many times?” DiGiacomo asked. He described Davis’s 2008 account as highly detailed and corroborated by other evidence.
DiGiacomo argued the 2008 proffer agreement was beyond the control of Las Vegas authorities, and Davis benefited from it for years. He said Davis later forfeited its protections by publicly repeating details because he was angry Los Angeles police detective Greg Kading wrote his own book about the case. Davis, he argued, couldn’t resist speaking up. The long delay before Davis was charged, DiGiacomo said, did not mean Las Vegas investigators doubted his culpability.
“We had to eat crow and allow a murderer to live in Henderson and not charge him because of the various things that happened in this case,” DiGiacomo said. He closed by pointing to a social media clip in which Davis boasted that he had “beat the streets,” “beat the Feds,” and “beat cancer.”
“And now he’s trying to beat 12 of you,” DiGiacomo told the jury. “That’s what’s going on here.”
Former Los Angeles police Detective Daryn Dupree testified on the third day of the trial, telling jurors Davis first volunteered his involvement in Shakur’s killing while investigators were questioning him about the 1997 slaying of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., or Biggie Smalls. Dupree said he and Kading confronted Davis at his home and told him they had evidence linking him to cocaine and PCP trafficking. They suggested Davis could help himself by cooperating.
Dupree said Davis denied any involvement in the Biggie shooting but then shocked them with the words, “We did the other one.” Davis later sat down for the recorded proffer interview with his lawyer.
“Don’t bullshit me, and I won’t bullshit y’all,” Davis said at the start of the Dec. 18, 2008, interview, which was played for jurors. Det. Kading assured him during the interview, “Nothing you say can be used against you.”
Davis appeared skeptical but went on to say he was riding in the front passenger seat of the white Cadillac, with Anderson seated behind him, fellow South Side Compton Crips member DeAndre “Dre” Smith behind the driver, and Terrence “Bubble Up” Brown at the wheel. (All three of the other passengers are now dead.)
According to Davis’ account, the Cadillac pulled alongside a BMW driven by Knight, with Shakur in the passenger seat, near the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane just off the Las Vegas Strip. Davis said he did not have a clear shot, so he passed a loaded .40-caliber Glock to the back seat. Smith hesitated, Davis said, and Anderson grabbed the weapon and opened fire.
“He leaned over on the window. He rolled down the window, popped ’em,” Davis said on the recording. “If they drove on my side, I would have popped ’em.”
Davis said Knight looked directly at him as the gunfire erupted. Knight was wounded but survived the attack, while Shakur was struck multiple times and died six days later at age 25.
“We did what we had to do,” Davis said of the shooting. He told investigators that after fleeing, the group returned to a hotel to “smoke weed and drink.”
Sanft argued his client’s account was pure fiction, and that investigators failed to quickly and vigorously corroborate it for a reason. “It’s because they knew he was full of crap,” Sanft told jurors during his opening statement.
Prosecutors countered that Davis repeatedly told versions of the same story over and over, growing bolder by the year. They argued that by publicly repeating his claims from the proffer, Davis waived his protections against prosecution.
Dupree said he believed Davis was telling the truth during the 2008 proffer, in part because Davis implicated his own nephew. “I didn’t think Mr. Davis was lying because he put the gun in his nephew’s hand,” Dupree testified.
Anderson, who long had been considered a suspect in Shakur’s killing, denied involvement before his death in an unrelated Compton shooting in 1998 at age 23.
At Davis’ trial other witnesses described the early investigation and the atmosphere surrounding the shooting. Former Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale testified that he rode in the ambulance with the wounded Shakur and repeatedly asked him to identify his attacker. Dale said Shakur refused.
“No, we’ll take care of it,” Dale recalled the rapper saying.
Reggie Wright Jr., Knight’s testified about the escalating East Coast-West Coast rap industry war that pitted Knight’s label in California against Bad Boy Records and its CEO Sean Combs in New York. He recalled seeing Davis with members of Sean “Puffy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records entourage at the 1996 Soul Train Awards in Los Angeles, where a member of the Bad Boy entourage allegedly brandished a gun.
Jurors heard testimony that police tried to corroborate Davis’ claim that Combs had offered money for Knight’s killing. Dupree told them Davis became a confidential informant in 2009 and traveled with investigators to New York in an effort to reconnect with Eric “Zip” Martin, the man Davis identified as his link to Combs.
Combs supposedly had given money to Zip Martin to give to Mr. Davis for payment for the Tupac murder, Dupree testified. The effort failed when Martin, who was in poor health, did not meet with Davis as investigators had hoped.
Combs, now serving a 50-month prison term for his 2025 conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, has vehemently denied any involvement in Shakur’s death
