The charges against him were prompted by his own descriptions in recent years about orchestrating the deadly attack, prosecutors said.
Image: Tupac Shakur in 1993 Pic: Michael Ferguson/MediaPunch/IPx
The judge said prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, but Davis could be jailed for life if convicted.
Attorney Ross Goodman, who represented Davis until he lost a legal bid that barred him from hiring a private lawyer, previously said prosecutors lack witnesses and key evidence, including a gun or vehicle, for the murder.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson declined to respond to Mr Goodman’s criticism of the evidence, saying that a jury will weigh the results of the police investigation.
The suspect will appear in court again on Tuesday for the trial to be scheduled.
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Image: Duane Davis Pic: Las Vegas Police Department via AP
Davis, originally from Compton, California, was arrested on 29 September outside a home in a Las Vegas suburb.
He remains in custody without bail.
The indictment alleges Davis obtained and provided a gun to someone in the back seat of a Cadillac before the car-to-car gunfire killed Shakur and wounded rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight at an intersection just off the Las Vegas Strip.
Knight, now 58, is in prison in California, serving a 28-year sentence for the death of a Compton businessman in 2015.
Image: Court-released image of Tupac and Knight in the car the pair were shot in
Shakur died a week after the shooting, aged 25. The identity of his murderer remains one of hip-hop music’s most enduring mysteries.
Prosecutors allege his killing in Las Vegas came out of competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for dominance in a musical genre dubbed “gangsta rap”.
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4:52
What happened to rapper Tupac Shakur?
The grand jury was told the shooting was retaliation for an earlier fight at a Las Vegas casino involving Shakur and Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.
Prosecutors said Davis implicated himself in the killing in multiple interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir that described his life leading a Crips sect in Compton.
Davis has said he obtained a .40-calibre handgun and handed it to Anderson, a member of Davis’ gang, in the back seat of a Cadillac, though he didn’t identify Anderson as the shooter.
Anderson, then 22, denied involvement in Shakur’s killing and died two years later in a separate shooting in Compton. The other back seat passenger and the driver of the Cadillac are also dead.
Shakur is largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time. He had five number one albums, was nominated for six Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.
Thousands of people gathered in various cities across the US as protests against Donald Trump and Elon Musk took place in all 50 states on Saturday.
Around 1,200 demonstrations were planned in locations including Washington DC, New York City and West Palm Beach, Florida – just miles away from where the US president has this weekend played golf.
The “Hands Off!” protests were against the Trump administration’s handling of government downsizing, human rights and the economy, among other issues.
In Washington DC, protesters streamed on the grass in front of the Washington Monument, where one person carried a banner which read: “Make democracy great again.”
Image: Thousands gathered in Washington DC to rally against various Trump policies. Pic: AP
Image: Pic: AP
Another protester took aim at Mr Trump‘s handling of Russia and Ukraine, with a placard that read: “Stop Putin’s puppets from destroying America.”
Tesla boss Mr Musk also featured on many signs due to his role in controversial government cuts as head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Image: Demonstrators in NYC. Pic: AP
Image: People marching in Atlanta, Georgia. Pic: Reuters
Image: A rally in Vermont. Pic: The Brattleboro Reformer via AP
Terry Klein, a retired biomedical scientist, said she drove to the rally to protest Mr Trump’s policies on “everything from immigration to the DOGE stuff to the tariffs this week, to education”.
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“I mean, our whole country is under attack, all of our institutions, all the things that make America what it is,” she added.
Image: A drone view of the protest at the Utah State Capitol building. Pic Reuters
Image: A protester sports a Handmaid’s Tale costume. Pic: Reuters
Image: Pic: Reuters
Some at the various protests carried Ukrainian flags, while others sported rainbow attire and waved rainbow flags in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
Other protesters wore Palestinian keffiyeh scarves and carried “Free Palestine” signs.
Protesters refuse to take Donald Trump’s policies lying down
It was built to honour George Washington, a founding father of the United States.
And in the shadow of the 555ft Washington Monument, protestors were refusing to accept Donald Trump’s policies lying down.
“Stand tall,” they chanted, again and again.
“In every city, stand tall. In every state, stand tall. In truth, stand tall. In justice, stand tall.”
Those words, shouted by thousands on the city’s iconic mall, were reinforced by the words on their placards and t-shirts.
A minister, wearing a t-shirt with ‘Troublesome Priest’ printed on it, told me she found what was happening in the US government “appalling and immortal”.
One man said he had won the long-distance award, having travelled 2,750 miles from Hawaii for the protest.
“I finally reached a breaking point,” he added. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Another woman said: “We have to speak up, we have to act, we have to do something, because this is not America.”
I asked her what she would say to those who argue the people did speak when they elected Donald Trump as president.
She replied: “Some people have spoken and then some people have not and those of us that have not, we need to speak now.”
Thousands marched in New York City’s midtown Manhattan and in Boston, Massachusetts, while hundreds gathered in the sunshine outside the Utah State Capitol building in Salt Lake City, and in the rain outside the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio.
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Mr Trump – who shook financial markets with his tariffs announcement this week – spent the day in Florida, playing a round of golf before returning to his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Image: People protest in Manhattan. Pic: Reuters
Image: Activists in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Pic: AP
Some four miles from Mar-a-Lago, more than 400 people gathered – and drivers honked their horns in support of protesters who held up signs including one which read: “Markets tank, Trump golfs.”
The White House has said Mr Trump plans to go golfing again on Sunday.
Global financial markets gave a clear vote of no-confidence in President Trump’s economic policy.
The damage it will do is obvious: costs for companies will rise, hitting their earnings.
The consequences will ripple throughout the global economy, with economists now raising their expectations for a recession, not only in the US, but across the world.
While the UK’s FTSE 100 closed down 1.55% and the continent’s STOXX Europe 600 index was down 2.67% as of 5.30pm, it was American traders who were hit the most.
All three of the US’s major markets opened to sharp losses on Thursday morning.
Image: The S&P 500 is set for its worst day of trading since the COVID-19 pandemic. File pic: AP
By 8.30pm UK time (3.30pm EST), The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3.7%, the S&P 500 opened with a drop of 4.4%, and the Nasdaq composite was down 5.6%.
Compared to their values when Donald Trump was inaugurated, the three markets were down around 5.6%, 8.7% and 14.4%, respectively, according to LSEG.
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Worst one-day losses since COVID
As Wall Street trading ended at 9pm in the UK, two indexes had suffered their worst one-day losses since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The S&P 500 fell 4.85%, the Nasdaq dropped 6%, and the Dow Jones fell 4%.
It marks Nasdaq’s biggest daily percentage drop since March 2020 at the start of COVID, and the largest drop for the Dow Jones since June 2020.
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5:07
The latest numbers on tariffs
‘Trust in President Trump’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN earlier in the day that Mr Trump was “doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term”.
“To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” she told the broadcaster, adding: “This is indeed a national emergency… and it’s about time we have a president who actually does something about it.”
Later, the US president told reporters as he left the White House that “I think it’s going very well,” adding: “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom.”
He later said on Air Force One that the UK is “happy” with its tariff – the lowest possible levy of 10% – and added he would be open to negotiations if other countries “offer something phenomenal”.
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3:27
How is the world reacting to Trump’s tariffs?
Economist warns of ‘spiral of doom’
The turbulence in the markets from Mr Trump’s tariffs “just left everybody in shock”, Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions in Boston, told Reuters.
He added that the economy could go into recession as a result, saying that “a lot of the pain, will probably most acutely be felt in the US and that certainly would weigh on broader global growth as well”.
Meanwhile, chief investment officer at St James’s Place Justin Onuekwusi said that international retaliation is likely, even as “it’s clear countries will think about how to retaliate in a politically astute way”.
He warned: “Significant retaliation could lead to a tariff ‘spiral of doom’ that could be the growth shock that drags us into recession.”
It comes as the UK government published a long list of US products that could be subject to reciprocal tariffs – including golf clubs and golf balls.
Running to more than 400 pages, the list is part of a four-week-long consultation with British businesses and suggests whiskey, jeans, livestock, and chemical components.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Thursday that the US president had launched a “new era” for global trade and that the UK will respond with “cool and calm heads”.
It also comes as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a 25% tariff on all American-imported vehicles that are not compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal.
He added: “The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over. This is a tragedy.”