Keffe D
Found Guilty in Tupac Murder
Published
A Las Vegas jury has found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of murder in the first degree in the death of Tupac Shakur.
The jury returned its verdict Monday, convicting Davis of murder with the use of a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. The 63-year-old now faces a possible maximum sentence of life in prison … although he has already made it clear to the judge he plans to appeal the verdict.
Prosecutors never claimed Davis fired the fatal shots during the September 1996 drive by shooting. Instead, they argued he was the “shot caller” who handed the murder weapon to the gunman, believed to have been his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, or another man riding in the back seat.
The verdict marks the first conviction in connection with Tupac’s murder, one of the most notorious unsolved killings in music history.
Prosecutors never accused Keffe D of pulling the trigger himself. Instead, they argued he orchestrated the Las Vegas shooting as retaliation after Tupac and his entourage got into a fight with Keffe D’s nephew earlier that night.
They pointed jurors to Keffe D’s own police interviews and his memoir, including a 2008 interview in which he told investigators he handed his nephew a gun and said his nephew was the one who fired the fatal shots.
His attorney, meanwhile, argued Keffe D’s admissions were nothing more than tall tales, telling jurors his client was “full of crap” and that’s why he was never charged for decades.
Over the course of the trial, jurors heard testimony from two dozen prosecution witnesses and just three defense witnesses. Keffe D did not testify in his own defense.
The guilty verdict marks the first conviction in connection with Tupac’s murder.
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