Suspect in Tupac Shakur murder found guilty of battery following jailhouse fight

(CN) — A Nevada jury on Wednesday found the man suspected of the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur guilty of charges stemming from a jailhouse fight with another inmate.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis pleaded not guilty to battery by prisoner and challenges to fight — a felony and gross misdemeanor, respectively — which carry combined prison terms of two to 12 years. Davis is set to be sentenced on May 27. Over the course of the one-day trial, both sides were careful not to bring up the murder charge that landed Davis in jail in the first place, as all members of the jury stated they were not aware of Davis or his more high-profile charge in the Shakur killing.

Davis asserts that his involvement in the Dec. 23, 2024, fight was merely self-defense. The aggressor, his attorney argues, was Rochlon Hamilton, a man held two cells down from Davis.

Surveillance footage capturing the fight shows Hamilton waiting by a sink in a common area within the jail. A corrections officer had brought him in and left Hamilton to wait for him to return with a razor so the inmate could shave.

Meanwhile, Davis was passing through the room with a corrections officer when returning from a visit with his attorney, Carl Arnold. Arnold argues that Hamilton clocked this and tucked himself behind a pole and out of view until Davis and the corrections officer escorting him entered the room.

“He’s laying in wait at this point,” Arnold said during opening arguments. “Because he knows what his intentions are. His intentions are to attack my client.”

The videos show the two detention center inmates squaring off before coming to blows. Prison officials testified that it was preceded by an exchange of “What’s up?” — a question the state argues carries a much different implication in prison.

“‘What’s up’ is not a term of endearment; it’s enticing each other into going into further confrontation,” testified Patrick Gray, a corrections officer at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and lead investigator of the fight.

The state argues that Davis played as much of a role in instigating the fight as Hamilton and points to taped phone calls in which it says Davis bragged about the altercation, saying “I get dirty, dude,” and “dog handles his business.”

Arnold pressed the correctional officers about the nature of the inmates’ run-in with one another, questioning whether it was against policy for an inmate to be left alone in a common area. The officers admitted it was an unusual circumstance.

In closing arguments, the state urged the jury not to focus on whether the jail should have ensured the two men were kept away from one another but rather whether the behavior met the conditions of the charge.

“Why are all those procedures in place in the first place? Because people like Hamilton and Davis are going to get into a brawl,” Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said. Finding Davis innocent of the charges would hold people in jail to a different standard and send a message that violence is permitted, he said.

Further, the argument that Davis was merely defending himself fails, DiGiacomo argued.

“Neither one is entitled to self-defense,” DiGiacomo said. However, he argued that if anyone was, it would be Hamilton because Davis can be seen on camera approaching the man.

Arnold painted a different picture, one where Hamilton was the instigator and Davis acted in response to what he felt was imminent danger.

“The state cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my client did not act in self-defense,” Arnold said. He likened the situation to a schoolyard scuffle and urged the jury to carefully review the surveillance footage to look for Hamilton making the first move against Davis.

“There has to be someone who threw the punch first, and that’s what we have from Mr. Hamilton,” Arnold said.

Where the state argued the two men engaged in mutual combat, Arnold argued there was no evidence to support that conclusion. The fact that Hamilton and Davis continued to grapple on the ground while a corrections officer pepper-sprayed them and attempted to pry them apart doesn’t take away Davis’ claim of self-defense.

“Here’s the thing: self-defense goes to the person that believes they’re in imminent danger,” Arnold said. “My client believed he was in imminent danger when he made that turn, saw that guy in the corner that said ‘What’s up’ and he’s coming at him.”

Both Hamilton and Davis were charged with battery and challenges to fight. Hamilton’s trial for the same charges is set for late October. The two were initially going to be heard together, but Clark County District Judge Nadia Krall severed the cases over concerns that Davis’ notoriety might prejudice the trial.

During the trial, the state reassured the jury that it didn’t have to choose which of the men was guilty of battery and asserted that both were charged with the same offenses.

“You don’t have to determine who’s more wrong. Both are wrong,” Clark County Deputy District Attorney Parker Brooks said.

The battery trial precedes Davis’ more highly anticipated trial for his accused involvement in the 1996 murder of Shakur, in which he was charged with one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon.

He’s pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, claiming in a memoir that he was in a car with his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, and that it was Anderson who shot and killed Shakur at an intersection near the Las Vegas Strip. Anderson denied involvement in the death of Shakur and was killed in 1998 in a shooting in Compton, California.

Authorities believe Shakur’s murder stemmed from competition between East Coast members of the Bloods and the West Coast group called the Crips. Davis was part of the latter group that competed for dominance in the “gangster rap” genre.

Davis’ jury trial for the murder charge is set for February 2026.