A Las Vegas jury convicted Duane “Keffe D” Davis on Monday of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, delivering the first-ever conviction in a case that has haunted hip-hop for nearly 30 years.
Jurors deliberated for less than three hours following a nine-day trial, hearing from 24 prosecution witnesses and three defense witnesses. Davis, 63, who could face life in prison, was the only surviving occupant of the white Cadillac from which shots were fired at Shakur.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors Davis armed himself, and “went hunting” for Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight after they beat Davis’s nephew hours earlier. “It’s a plan, not an impulse,” Palal said, arguing the shooting was premeditated.
Rapper Tupac Shakur attends a voter registration event in South Central Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 1996. Frank Wiese/AP Photo
Defense attorney Michael Sanft countered that no phone records, surveillance footage, or anything like receipts placed Davis in Las Vegas that night. Prosecutors, however, cited Davis’s memoir and public interviews as consistent self-incrimination, according to prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo, who called Davis’s scrapbook of Shakur articles evidence he was “scrapbooking his murder.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
