Nearly 30 years after one of hip-hop’s most infamous unsolved crimes, jury selection is set to begin in Las Vegas in the murder case of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the only person ever charged in the 1996 drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur.
The trial at Clark County District Court, with Judge Carli Kierny presiding, is expected to last about a month. Prosecutors hope it will finally bring a conviction in a case that has fueled speculation, books, and documentaries for three decades.
Tupac Shakur was 25 and at the peak of his fame. He had released All Eyez on Me seven months earlier, was signed to Death Row Records, and was in the middle of a highly public feud with East Coast artists including The Notorious B.I.G. and Bad Boy Records founder Sean “Diddy” Combs.
On the night of September 7, Shakur attended the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon heavyweight fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. After the fight he was headed with Death Row CEO Marion “Suge” Knight to Club 662 for a performance.
Just after 11 p.m., at the intersection of East Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, one block east of the Las Vegas Strip, a white Cadillac pulled up alongside Knight’s black BMW. Shots were fired. Shakur was hit multiple times. Knight was grazed but survived.shakur died in hospital six days later on September 13, 1996. No arrests were made at the time. The case went cold.
In September 2023, Las Vegas police arrested 63-year-old Duane Davis. He was charged with one count of murder with a deadly weapon, with an enhancement for committing the crime to benefit a criminal gang.
Davis, a former Compton resident, had spoken about the case publicly for years. In 2019 he co-authored a memoir titled Compton Street Legend. In it, he described himself as a leader of the South Side Compton Crips at the time of the shooting.
According to the book and grand jury testimony, Davis said he was in the white Cadillac with three other men that night: his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, Terry “Bubble Up” Brown, and Deandrae “Freaky” Smith. He wrote that the group was retaliating after an earlier casino altercation involving Anderson and Shakur.
Davis did not name who fired the shots in the book. All three other men in the car are now deceased. Anderson was killed in a gang shootout in Compton in 1998. Brown and Smith also died in gang-related violence in the years that followed.
Prosecutors allege Davis was the one who arranged the shooting. In grand jury testimony cited in court filings, former South Side Crip affiliate Denvonta Lee said Anderson didn’t have a clear shot, so Smith took the gun and fired
The shooting happened at the height of the East Coast vs. West Coast rap rivalry. Shakur was closely associated with Death Row Records and the Mob Piru Bloods. Davis, in his book, alleged that Combs offered money to have Knight and Shakur killed.
Combs, who was sentenced in October 2025 to 50 months in prison after a conviction on charges unrelated to this case, has consistently denied any involvement in Shakur’s death.
Six months after Shakur was killed, The Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, was also shot and killed in Los Angeles. That case also remains unsolved.prosecutors, led by Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo and Binu Palal, are expected to rely heavily on Davis’s own words — from the memoir, from interviews he gave to police, and from media appearances over the years.
The defense is expected to challenge the credibility of that evidence, and argue that after 30 years, witness memories are unreliable and other suspects are deadSuge Knight, who was driving the car. Knight told TMZ in 2023 he does not plan to testify. He is currently serving a 28-year sentence in California for a 2015 fatal hit-and-run.
- Leonard Jefferson, a photographer who was stopped at the light next to Shakur’s car and took one of the last photos of the rapper alive.
Jury selection is expected to take several days. Opening statements will follow. The courtroom is expected to be full, and the proceedings will be streamed live on YouTube to millions of viewers.shakur was more than a rapper caught in gang violence. He released five No. 1 albums, was nominated for six Grammys, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. His lyrics mixed bravado with vulnerability, and songs like “Dear Mama” and “Changes” made him one of the most influential artists of the 1990s.
“Will I survive? Will I die? Let’s picture the possibility,” he rapped on the title track of All Eyez on Me months before his death.
For fans, the trial is about more than legal procedure. It’s about closure. For law enforcement, it’s a test of whether a decades-old case built largely on a defendant’s own statements can hold up in court.if convicted, Davis faces life in prison. If acquitted, the case will likely remain officially unsolved, with all other known suspects in the car now dead.
Either way, the trial will put back on record the details of that night in 1996: the fight at the MGM, the drive down Flamingo, the white Cadillac, and the shots that ended the life of an artist who was still shaping American music.
After 30 years of theories, the evidence will finally be tested in front of a jury in Las Vegas — the same city where Tupac Shakur took his last breath.
