Thirty years after his death, a jury has finally found former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty in the murder of Tupac Shakur. Ironically, it was Davis’s own words that helped convict him of Tupac’s murder.
Davis, the only person ever charged in connection with the murder of Tupac Shakur, has claimed he is innocent and had nothing to do with the 1996 drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Authorities arrested him on one count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang in September of 2023.
The ironic part of his being arrested in the first place is that it came about mainly due to Davis making numerous media appearances talking about the crime and even self-publishing a memoir with the tagline “The last living eyewitness to Tupac’s murder is telling his story.”
“Had he decided to never write the book, he would not, probably, have ever been prosecuted for the crime,” The Guardian reports prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said.
It took the jury about three hours to convict Duane Davis
On Monday, a jury in Las Vegas took about three hours to reach a guilty verdict after hearing what amounted to multiple confessions about Shakur’s murder from Davis himself.
Although Duane Davis did not actually commit the murder himself, prosecutors charged him with orchestrating the fatal shooting. He spent years disclosing his role to investigators and interviewers on podcasts, in a documentary and in his 2019 memoir.
He later claimed he wasn’t even in Las Vegas, despite his previous statements, including those to police in 2008 and 2009 and in a 2018 docuseries titled Death Row Chronicles. Now he claims he was hundreds of miles away, at home in Los Angeles, at the time of the murder.
Michael Sanft, Davis’s lawyer, attempted to portray the remarks and stories as the inflated and bloated allegations of a man seeking to capitalize on the public attention and unresolved issues surrounding Tupac Shakur’s death. The jury didn’t buy it.
The jury found Duane Davis, 63, guilty on Monday of one count of murder with a dangerous weapon, and he could now receive a life sentence. Due to witness issues, the prosecution announced on Monday night that the state will drop the gang enhancement portion of the charges against Davis. The judge has set his sentencing for October 13, 2026.
“We’ve been waiting 30 years to grieve properly,” The Guardian reports Zayd Akinyela, Shakur’s cousin, told reporters outside the courtroom when the trial was under way.