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Duane 'Keffe D' Davis convicted in Tupac Shakur's 1996 murder

musicSep 1, 202620918

A Las Vegas jury found former South Side Compton Crips leader Duane "Keffe D" Davis guilty of one count of murder with a deadly weapon for the drive-by killing of Tupac Shakur on 7 September 1996. Prosecutors said Davis did not fire the fatal shots but ordered the shooting and supplied the gun his nephew Orlando Anderson used after Anderson was involved in a fight with Shakur and his entourage earlier that night. The conviction rests heavily on Davis's own admissions, including a 2008 police interview and passages from his 2019 memoir in which he acknowledged being inside the white Cadillac from which shots were fired; a court ruled his earlier interview could be used at trial. Davis, 63, stood impassively in court and said he would appeal; his lawyer Michael Sanft argued Davis's statements were exaggerations made to sell books. Prosecutor Binu Palal urged jurors to take Davis at his word as the organizer of the attack. Judge Carli Kierny set Davis's sentencing for 13 October. The verdict is the first conviction in a nearly 30 year cold case that had produced many theories but no prior guilty verdicts.

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