Thirty years of barbershop mythology just ran into a Nevada jury. Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the self-described South Side Compton Crips shot-caller who spent decades turning Tupac Shakur’s murder into a brand, is now a convicted first-degree murderer.
Fox News reported Monday that a Las Vegas jury found Davis guilty of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon in the September 7, 1996 drive-by that killed the 25-year-old rapper. Jurors began deliberating after closing arguments. They had already sat through nine days of testimony from 24 prosecution witnesses and three for the defense.
Davis did not have to pull the trigger to own the crime. Nevada law does not require it. Prosecutors said he planned the shooting, supplied the gun, and sent a white Cadillac after the BMW carrying Shakur and Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight. Knight walked away with minor injuries. Shakur died six days later.
The motive was as old as Cain. Hours earlier, after Mike Tyson beat Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand, Shakur and his entourage jumped Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, in the casino. Davis decided that beating would be answered with bullets on the Strip. Anderson himself was later shot dead in a Compton gang fight in 1998. The other men said to have been in that Cadillac are dead too. Davis was the last one left to face a courtroom.