Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former Los Angeles gang member, has been found guilty of the 1996 murder of chart-topping rapper Tupac Shakur by a Las Vegas court. The 63-year-old was convicted on Monday after the jury deliberated for only a few hours, nearly 30 years after Shakur was killed. “Count one, murder with use […] The post Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis found guilty in Tupac Shakur murder appeared first on Tribune Online .
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former Los Angeles gang member, has been found guilty of the 1996 murder of chart-topping rapper Tupac Shakur by a Las Vegas court.
The 63-year-old was convicted on Monday after the jury deliberated for only a few hours, nearly 30 years after Shakur was killed.
“Count one, murder with use of a deadly weapon, guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon,” the foreperson of the jury announced to the court.
Davis, who could face life imprisonment without parole, told Judge Carli Kierny after the verdict that he intended to appeal.
Prosecutors accused Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, of orchestrating the September 7, 1996 shooting after his nephew was involved in a confrontation with members of Shakur’s entourage at a Las Vegas casino.
“Duane Davis, in the culture of gangs, could not let that stand,” prosecutor Binu Palal said during closing arguments. “So what did he do? He acquired a firearm, got his group together, and went hunting for Mr Shakur.”
Shakur was in Las Vegas to attend a Mike Tyson heavyweight fight when the confrontation occurred. About two hours later, the rapper was travelling in the front passenger seat of a BMW with Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight when a white Cadillac pulled alongside them at a red light.
According to prosecutors, Davis passed a firearm to a passenger in the Cadillac and instructed the person to shoot Shakur. The rapper was struck by gunfire and died six days later.
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Knight, who was driving the BMW, was also wounded in the attack.
Davis is the only person who was inside the Cadillac that night who is still alive. He is also the only person charged in connection with Shakur’s killing.
The murder of Shakur, who was widely known as 2Pac, became one of the most prominent unsolved cases in American music history, generating decades of speculation over the circumstances surrounding his death and the people responsible.
Davis’s Crips were among the rival gangs that controlled parts of Los Angeles during the 1990s.
His sentencing is scheduled for October 13.
