A Clark County jury convicted Duane "Keffe D" Davis, 63, of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon on Monday for orchestrating the 1996 drive-by shooting that killed rap icon Tupac Shakur, ending a case that sat unsolved for nearly three decades.

Jurors deliberated for less than three hours after a weeks-long trial before returning the verdict. Prosecutors, Chief Deputy District Attorneys Binu Palal and Marc DiGiacomo, argued Davis was the "shot caller" for the South Side Compton Crips who supplied the gun used in the shooting, allegedly in retaliation for an earlier beating of his nephew by Shakur's entourage. The actual triggerman is believed to have been Davis's late nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, who was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998.

Three Decades to a Verdict

Shakur, 25, was shot multiple times while riding in a car driven by Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight near the Las Vegas Strip on September 7, 1996, and died six days later at a Las Vegas hospital. The case went cold for years until Davis, who had publicly described his role in a 2019 memoir and subsequent interviews, was arrested in 2023, according to reporting from NBC News.

Davis is being held without bail. Judge Carli Kierny is scheduled to sentence him on October 13; he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. His attorneys are expected to appeal.

THIRTY YEARS OF WAITING FOR JUSTICE

Tupac's sister, Sekyiwa "Set" Shakur, wept in the courtroom as the verdict was read, embracing family members and prosecutors afterward, according to CNN's courtroom report. The conviction lands just under two weeks before the September 13 anniversary of Shakur's death.

The verdict closes out one of the most enduring mysteries in music history, one that fueled decades of documentaries, podcasts and conspiracy theories about who really killed Shakur and why. Coverage from NPR noted the case had become a touchstone for unsolved hip-hop violence of the 1990s, alongside the still-unsolved murder of The Notorious B.I.G. six months later.

What's Next

Sentencing is set for October 13. Legal observers expect Davis's defense team to challenge the conviction on appeal, potentially revisiting questions about the admissibility of his own public statements as evidence. For now, the case that once seemed destined to remain permanently unresolved has its first conviction.