What happened
A jury in Las Vegas on Monday found former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder for orchestrating the 1996 drive-by killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur. During the three-week trial, prosecutors leaned on Davis’ public admissions that he procured and handed a fellow Crips member the gun that killed Shakur. Davis’ lawyer said his client’s admissions, including in his 2019 memoir, were “fiction” to “make money” from Shakur’s murder.
Who said what
Prosecutors said Davis and his nephew, Orlando Anderson, “went hunting” for Shakur after Anderson was beaten amid a bitter bicoastal rap feud between Shakur’s Death Row Records label, allied with the Bloods gang, and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records, protected by the Crips. Both factions were in Las Vegas for a Mike Tyson fight.
The case “had languished” for years “as important evidence, including the murder weapon, remained missing and key witnesses” refused to cooperate, The New York Times said. Davis “began speaking to the police” in 2008 to avoid serious drug charges, but the plea deal that made him “untouchable” was rendered moot after he “began repeatedly addressing the shooting publicly” under the “mistaken belief that he was fully immune from prosecution.”
What next?
Davis, 63, faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 13.
Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996
