Former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been sentenced to at least 40 years in prison for orchestrating the 1996 murder of American rap superstar Tupac Shakur....
Former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been sentenced to at least 40 years in prison for orchestrating the 1996 murder of American rap superstar Tupac Shakur.
Davis, 63, was found guilty in September of one count of murder with a deadly weapon over Shakur’s death in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas on 7 September 1996.
He has vowed to appeal the verdict.
Prosecutors argued that although Davis did not fire the fatal shots himself, he masterminded the killing and supplied the gun used in the attack.
They alleged that his nephew, Orlando Anderson, fired the shots from a white Cadillac in which Davis was a passenger.
Anderson, who denied involvement in Shakur’s murder, died in an unrelated shooting in 1998.
During Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo accused Davis of spending years “publicly grandstanding” and boasting about his role in the killing, which he said had “wide-ranging effects upon the world”.
Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, told the court that her brother’s death had devastated their family.
“The loss of Tupac, for a long time, crippled my family,” she said.
She described her brother as a man with enormous promise and ambitions to make the world a better place, adding that he had hoped to help his local community.
Sekyiwa urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence, telling Davis he would have time in prison to “contemplate what you’ve done to the world, not just to me”.
Shakur’s brother, Maurice Shakur, also addressed the court, asking the judge to impose “the longest possible sentence”.
When Judge Carli Kierny asked Davis if he had anything to say before sentencing, he replied: “I’m good. I’m gonna appeal this case for sure.”
Before handing down the sentence, Kierny told him: “You don’t get to take a man from his family.
“You don’t get to take his very life, his whole future from him, and just walk away from it. Especially when that man is Tupac Shakur. The world never forgot about him and his death.”
The conviction marked a major breakthrough in one of America’s most notorious cold cases, which had fuelled speculation and conspiracy theories for nearly three decades.
A key part of the prosecution’s case was Davis’s own statements, in which he repeatedly acknowledged being inside the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired.
In a secret police interview in 2008, Davis disclosed details about his role in Shakur’s killing while authorities were investigating the murder of fellow rapper Christopher Wallace, popularly known as The Notorious B.I.G., who was killed months after Shakur.
Davis had initially been granted protection from prosecution under an agreement with authorities. However, his subsequent public statements about the killing, including revelations in his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, led to renewed scrutiny.
A judge later allowed the 2008 police interview to be used as evidence against him at trial.
Cathy Scott, a journalist who covered Shakur’s murder in the 1990s and later wrote a book about the case, said Davis might not have realised that murder has no statute of limitations.
Speaking to the BBC World Service’s Newsday programme, Scott said the combination of Shakur’s celebrity status, the Las Vegas setting and the mystery surrounding the unsolved killing had sustained public interest in the case.
“I don’t think it would have been as big if there hadn’t been such a mystery around not solving it. And that’s why 30 years later, it’s even bigger now,” she said.
During the trial, Davis’s defence team argued that his accounts were fabricated or exaggerated to generate publicity and make money from book sales.
Prosecutors maintained that Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, had ordered the shooting and supplied the weapon used by Anderson.
Shakur was 25 and at the height of his career when he was killed. Widely regarded as one of hip-hop’s most influential artists, he has sold more than 75 million records worldwide.
His murder remained one of America’s most closely followed unsolved cases until Davis’s prosecution brought renewed attention to the circumstances surrounding his death.