Why did justice take so long to catch Tupac Shakur’s killer?

For nearly three decades, Tupac Shakur’s killing remained unresolved. Then prosecutors built their case around the words of the man they said orchestrated it.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis was convicted of a single count of murder with a deadly weapon and could receive a life sentence. He has indicated that he will appeal. Prosecutors did not accuse Davis of firing the fatal shots. Instead, they argued that he organised the attack and supplied the weapon used to kill Shakur.

The case drew on Davis’s own accounts in interviews with investigators and the media, social media appearances, documentaries and his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend.” In the book, Davis placed himself in the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired. His defence portrayed him as a liar who exaggerated or invented stories for money and notoriety. Even after his arrest, Davis continued giving interviews from jail, insisted he was innocent and said the book had been ghostwritten.

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The strength of our case was Mr Davis … and his mouth.

“The strength of our case was Mr Davis … and his mouth,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said after the jury deliberated for less than three hours before returning a guilty verdict.

Hours before Shakur was shot on September 7, 1996, surveillance video captured Shakur’s entourage beating Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, inside the MGM Grand after a Mike Tyson fight. Prosecutors said Davis then obtained a gun, gathered a group that included Anderson and went looking for Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight. Shakur was shot in a black BMW near the Las Vegas Strip and died six days later at 25.

Brian Buckmire, a practising attorney and legal contributor to ABC America, said the long delay reflected missing information, people failing to report crimes, corruption within law enforcement and investigations that fell apart. He also pointed to further delays between the indictment and trial.

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If we're talking about the decades of delays, between not having the information, people not reporting crimes, corruption within law enforcement, investigations just falling apart, there are a number of reasons that we saw in this trial as to why it took this many years.