Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former Los Angeles gang leader who boasted for years of his involvement in the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, only to deny it when he came to trial, was sentenced to a minimum 40 years in prison on Tuesday.
The sentence, which will likely see him die in custody, comes three decades after the gunning down of one of the most influential hip hop artists of the late 20th century, and after years of criticism over investigations that went nowhere.
Davis, 63, formerly ran a branch of the feared Crips, one of a patchwork of rival gangs that controlled parts of Los Angeles in the 1990s.
He spent years evading justice and seemingly believed he was beyond the reach of the law when he wrote in his memoir that he had ordered the killing of Shakur.
“For three years, I’ve heard you say some variation of the same thing to law enforcement… in your book, and it’s something like, ‘Yeah, I was involved in this, but I’m different. I’ve moved on. I got out of Compton. I’m a grandfather now,'” Judge Carli Kierny told Davis as she handed down the sentence in a Las Vegas courtroom.
“I’m here to tell you that’s not how this works.”
“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 judge said.
Shakur was a key figure in a hip-hop rivalry pitting the US East Coast against the West Coast. He was just 25 when he was gunned down in Las Vegas.
A trial heard how Davis ordered the September 7, 1996 killing of the hip-hop artist after his own nephew had been beaten by members of Shakur’s entourage at a Las Vegas casino.
The “California Love” artist was shot about two hours after the casino confrontation by a gunman in a white Cadillac that pulled up at a red light alongside the BMW in which the rapper was riding.
Davis handed the gun to someone sitting in the back seat of the Cadillac and ordered that person to shoot Shakur, who died six days later.
The name of that person has not been definitively revealed and Davis is the only person who was in the Cadillac that evening who is still alive.
The driver of the BMW, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, was wounded.
– ‘Born an icon’ –
The killing of Shakur, also known as 2Pac, was one of America’s most famous cold cases, prompting endless debate among music fans over who did it, and why.
Known for hits including “All Eyez on Me,” Shakur — the son of a Black Panther activist — was raised in Harlem and Baltimore, but quickly became the epitome of California hip hop when he signed with Los Angeles-based Death Row Records.
His sister Sekyiwa Shakur paid emotional tribute on Tuesday to her brother, a man whom she said “was born an icon.”
She said their mother “consciously raised him to be a human rights activist, someone to stand up for those weaker and smaller than he was, and that’s who he was to me and all the family. He was the person that you go to for protection.
“He dedicated his career to the advancement of his people. He was gentle and kind to women and children. He fed anyone he knew that didn’t have. He was truly my shining star, my shining prince. He was who God trusted to take care of me.”
Davis offered no words of contrition ahead of the sentence being handed down, vowing only to appeal the guilty finding.
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