Las Vegas jury convicts Duane Davis in Tupac Shakur's 1996 killing

A Clark County jury on 1 September found Duane "Keffe D" Davis guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. Deliberations lasted less than three hours after an 11-day trial. Davis, 63, is the first person convicted in a case that sat uncharged for most of three decades. Judge Carli Kierny set sentencing for 13 October. He faces life without parole. He told the court he will appeal and asked for his phone and other personal items before he was led out. He raised a fist as he left.

Prosecutors never said Davis pulled the trigger. They said he ordered the shooting and put the gun in the car. Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors that Davis acquired a weapon and "went hunting" for Shakur and Death Row Records co-founder Marion "Suge" Knight after Shakur's entourage beat Davis's nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, at a Las Vegas casino earlier that night. "Duane Davis, in the culture of gangs, could not let that stand," Palal said.

Shakur was shot four times with a Glock .40-calibre pistol, reported in some accounts as a .22, while his car sat at a red light in Paradise, Nevada, on 7 September 1996. He died six days later. The shots came from a Cadillac. Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, was in that car. In a 2008 police interview played at trial he admitted he was in the vehicle and denied firing. Anderson, the nephew, died in a separate shooting in 1998 after denying any role. Davis is the only person from the Cadillac who is still alive.

The state dropped a gang enhancement during the case, citing witness logistics. The murder count that remained was enough. Sekyiwa "Set" Shakur, the rapper's sister, was in court, cried when the verdict was read and hugged the prosecutors. The family later said, through counsel, that they were elated and relieved. Prosecutors declined to talk after the verdict. The family said they would wait until sentencing.

The jury's youngest member is 21, born almost a decade after the shooting. That fact is not a curiosity. It is the distance the case travelled. Shakur's death became a catalogue of theories, documentaries and street talk. The legal file stayed thin until Davis was charged. The closing arguments took longer than the deliberations.

Davis stood in a black suit and did not show much when the clerk read the word. He is held without bail. A life sentence without parole is the top end on the calendar in October. An appeal is already promised. That means the public story of the killing will run past the 30th anniversary on 7 September, which now falls six days after the verdict rather than in a vacuum.

What the verdict does not do is produce the gunman as a living defendant. The state's theory still runs through Anderson or another man in the back seat. Both of those names are beyond a courtroom. Davis is the shot-caller the county could still put in a chair. That is the entire case that 12 Las Vegas residents took less than three hours to accept.

Hip-hop's most picked-over homicide now has a conviction and a sentencing date. It does not have a closed book. Davis will test the record on appeal. The family will sit through October. The Cadillac is gone. The tape from 2008 is not.