Davis Convicted of Tupac Shakur Murder After 30 Years

A Las Vegas jury convicted Duane Keith Davis of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon on August 31, closing the investigation into Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing after nearly three decades. Davis, 63 and a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, did not fire the shots that struck Shakur on September 7 but was found responsible under Nevada law for supplying the weapon and directing the attack from the front seat of a white Cadillac. The jury deliberated less than three hours.

The case turned on statements Davis made over many years. Prosecutors introduced excerpts from his 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend, a 2008 police interview, and later public comments in which he described obtaining a gun after Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight beat his nephew at the MGM Grand and then handing the weapon to a backseat passenger. Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis repeatedly placed himself inside the Cadillac and that those core facts never changed. Defense attorney Michael Sanft countered that the accounts were fiction written to sell books and that no physical evidence placed Davis in Las Vegas that night.

Shakur, 25, died six days after the shooting. His sister Sekyiwa Shakur wept in court when the verdict was read. Davis, who stood impassively, told the judge he would appeal. Sentencing is set for October 13; prosecutors dropped a gang-enhancement allegation after the verdict, citing witness logistics. Davis remains the only surviving person prosecutors say was inside the Cadillac.