A Dallas County jury found rapper Yella Beezy guilty of capital murder Wednesday, convicting him of orchestrating the 2020 killing of rival rapper MO3 in a brazen daylight shooting on an interstate highway.

Yella Beezy, whose real name is Markies Conway, received a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole — the required sentence for a capital murder conviction in Texas when prosecutors don't seek the death penalty, according to Billboard's coverage of the verdict. Conway reportedly "fell out in the back hall" of the courthouse after being taken into custody, per a detail NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported from inside the building.

A freeway ambush caught on video

MO3, whose real name was Melvin Noble, was shot to death in 2020 while driving on I-35E in broad daylight, chased on foot by a gunman in footage that circulated widely at the time. Prosecutors alleged Conway paid $40,000 to have Noble killed, amid a bitter, long-running feud between the two Dallas rappers that had spilled into diss tracks and public threats for years beforehand, according to the Dallas Observer.

"THE EVIDENCE WAS CIRCUMSTANTIAL" — DEFENSE ATTORNEYS, FOLLOWING THE VERDICT

The alleged gunman, Kewon White, was convicted of capital murder in a separate trial in September and is already serving life without parole. Prosecutors used that earlier trial, along with lyrics from songs connected to the Conway-Noble feud, to help build their case that Conway had both the motive and the means to orchestrate the killing. A third man, Devin Brown, has also been charged with capital murder in the case and is still awaiting trial.

What's next

Conway's defense team said after the verdict that they were disappointed and signaled an appeal is already in motion, repeating their argument throughout the trial that prosecutors never directly connected him to the shooting beyond circumstantial inference. Barring a successful appeal, Conway will spend the rest of his life in prison for a rivalry that both ended a young rapper's life and now permanently ends his own career outside prison walls.

The case has been closely watched across the hip-hop world as one of the more clear-cut examples in recent years of an industry feud escalating into real-world, lethal violence — and now, finally, a legal reckoning for it.