A 30-year wait for justice in Tupac’s killing ends with a murder conviction in under 3 hours

By Zoe Sottile, CNN

Las Vegas (CNN) — It took close to 30 years for someone to be arrested in the drive-by murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur, an extraordinary stretch that turned the young singer’s 1996 killing into the stuff of legend and conspiracy.

By contrast, it took less than three hours for a jury of 12 Clark County, Nevada, residents to convict Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former leader in the South Side Compton Crips, of first-degree murder – less time than the closing statements in the trial took.

As a court clerk read aloud the verdict, Shakur’s family members erupted into constrained emotion, with his sister Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur crying quietly. Other Shakur family members clasped hands and embraced; on the other side of the courtroom, Davis’ son, Duane Davis, Jr., held a hand to his face.

Davis, a 63-year-old who has spent the last years styling himself as an expert in Shakur’s killing, was straight-faced as the verdict was read. But he raised a fist as he left the courtroom – and asked the judge for an appeal, signaling that the decades-long quest for a semblance of justice in Shakur’s killing may not be over. He’s being held without bail and is set to be sentenced on October 13; he could spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At the heart of the 4-week trial was Davis’ own credibility. The prosecution presented, among other circumstantial evidence, the former gang leader’s own statements to police and in a 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” in which he placed himself in Las Vegas in the car with the shooter and said the killing was warranted. Davis, prosecutors said, didn’t fire the shots that killed Shakur. But he was the “shot caller” who orchestrated the killing as revenge for an attack on his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.

And selling his memoir, Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal said during his closing statement Monday, amounted to Davis “profiting off a murder.”

Davis’ defense attorney Michael Sanft argued that his own client is a liar who published the book for fame and money. He highlighted inconsistencies in Davis’ statements as well as corruption amongst the Compton Police Department, which was disbanded in 2000.

Sanft also focused on the lack of direct evidence tying Davis to the crime – floating the idea at one point that his client might not even have been in Nevada when Shakur was shot. There was no murder weapon recovered and no DNA or fingerprints linking Davis to the crime scene. There was also, despite being named on a list of possible witnesses by the state, no testimony from either Marion “Suge” Knight, who was driving the car Shakur was in when he was shot, or Sean “Diddy” Combs.

In the end, none of that seemed to matter. The jurors – the youngest of whom was, at 21 years old, born close to a decade after Shakur was killed – reached a unanimous verdict, making Davis the first and so far only person to be held legally accountable for Shakur’s killing.

“The family of Tupac Amaru Shakur is elated and relieved by today’s verdict,” the family said Monday in a statement released by their attorney. “We would like to thank the jury for thoughtfully fulfilling their duty and carefully listening to all the evidence.”

A trial decades in the making

Monday in Las Vegas’ downtown courthouse started like every other workday for the past few weeks: With a room full of Tupac fans, journalists, and curious Vegas residents throwing their names into a metal lottery box for a chance to sit in the courtroom where Davis’ fate would unfold.

The courthouse is located less than 7 miles from where Shakur was killed and less than two from the hospital where he died after days spent on life support. In another striking symmetry, the jury reached a verdict exactly two weeks before the 30th anniversary of Shakur’s death.

The best-selling rapper, who became an international superstar renowned for his poetic lyrics charged with deep political themes, was shot multiple times while driving with Death Row Records CEO Knight in Vegas, with one bullet obliterating his lung.

Anderson, Davis’ nephew and a member of the South Side Compton Crips, was long suspected of the shooting. Earlier that day, Shakur and his entourage had attacked Anderson in the lobby of the MGM Grand, a fight captured by hotel surveillance footage which was itself a retaliation for another fight. The feud was the manifestation of long-standing tensions between the Crips and Mob Piru, a Compton set of the Bloods gang with some connections to Death Row Records.

But Anderson denied any involvement and was never charged in Shakur’s killing. He was killed in an unrelated gang shootout two years later, and the other men allegedly in the car with him – besides Davis – are all dead, too. Anderson’s uncle was arrested in 2023, over a decade after he first told police through a proffer agreement that he had been in the Cadillac with Shakur’s killer when shots were fired.

The killing of a legendary rapper in his prime, and the seeming inability of authorities to pin down a culprit, mystified hip hop fans. Conspiracies swirled: Was Tupac really still alive? Was Biggie Smalls, Shakur’s East Coast enemy – in lyrics at least – who was himself gunned down just a few months later, somehow involved? A spate of documentaries, podcasts, and YouTube videos have plumbed the case for years.

A ‘slam dunk’ murder case

Delivering his rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument Monday, Clark County District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo called the case against Davis a “slam dunk” despite the lack of direct evidence.

“Mr. Davis is attempting to escape responsibility for a crime everybody knows he committed, even him,” DiGiacomo said, growing emphatic at turns as he outlined the state’s case against the defendant.

“He admits to it seven, eight times over the course of 30 years, and there’s no evidence contradicting that fact,” the prosecutor said. “End of the day, hold him accountable for the crime he committed.”

And it wasn’t just Davis’ own words that prosecutors said proved his guilt. There was also circumstantial evidence, like the contentious testimony of James “Mob James” McDonald, who worked for Death Row at the time of Shakur’s killing and said that violence was a routine aspect of gang life at the time.

“It was a gang war,” McDonald, a 61-year-old who self-identified as a “hostile witness,” said during his August 18 testimony.

“Were they the only ones that they wanted to kill? Am I the only one up in this? No, they weren’t the only one,” McDonald said. “But they were the main subjects of a gang war.”

Sanft, alternately, in a closing statement that lasted longer than his own defense case, said, “You have no proof. There is no evidence.”

He highlighted Davis’ shifting statements about the night Shakur was killed, which he said showed his client was “telling you fiction as to how this all goes down.” He also questioned the integrity of case files in the murder investigation.

By the time the verdict was read Monday afternoon, most members of the public had left the courtroom. But some – including one-time associates of the rapper – remained.

Darryl Harper, a former Death Row Records producer who flew from Georgia to Las Vegas for the trial, told CNN at the start of the trial he wanted to make sure the authorities “have the right person.” After around two weeks of testimony, he felt satisfied with the jury’s conclusion.

But he said he wished, most of all, the world could have known the Tupac he knew: a ferociously talented young artist who was warm and welcoming to his creative partners, funnier than his gangster image let on, and deeply personable despite the meteoric fame he already achieved before being killed at just 25 years old.

“I met what probably was one of the best guys I ever met, and it just ended, sudden like that,” Harper said after Monday’s conviction. “I certainly felt cheated, but I’m sure a lot of the world felt cheated.”

“While this verdict is decades in the making, this is not the end of the story,” the Shakur family said in their statement. “Tupac’s legacy and impact on the world lives on and we will continue to do everything we can to keep his spirit alive.”

As years turned into decades with no one held accountable for the killing, there was a lingering feeling of injustice that “just never went away.”

At the unofficial memorial for Shakur – a collection of Sharpied and spray-painted remembrances at the intersection where he was shot – some new tributes have appeared in the weeks since the trial began.

There’s a portrait of Shakur, and a bundle of flowers duct-taped to a pole – vivid, multi-colored proof that the rapper’s legacy is still alive.

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CNN’s Andy Rose, Taylor Romine, Elizabeth Wolfe, Nic F. Anderson, Jack Hannah and Josh Campbell contributed to this report.