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Duane “Keffe D” Davis was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison on Tuesday for the 1996 murder of rap icon Tupac Shakur, nearly three decades after the artist was fatally shot in Las Vegas.
Judge Carli Kierny handed down the sentence after a 12-person jury found Davis guilty of first-degree murder in August following a trial that lasted several weeks.
Davis remains the only person charged in connection with Shakur’s killing and has said he plans to appeal the verdict.
Shakur was riding in a black BMW alongside music executive Marion “Suge” Knight on Sept. 7, 1996, when a white Cadillac pulled up beside their vehicle at a Las Vegas intersection and gunfire broke out. Shakur died six days later from his injuries, while Knight survived the shooting.
Prosecutors argued that Davis had organized the attack in retaliation for a confrontation involving his nephew, Orlando Anderson, at a Las Vegas casino earlier that evening. Anderson was later killed in a gang-related shooting in 1998.
Prosecutors built part of their case around Davis’ public accounts of the shooting, drawing on media interviews, podcasts and a memoir published in 2019.
Following the guilty verdict, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson pointed to those statements as crucial evidence, saying, “The strength of our case was Mr. Davis.”
Defense attorneys challenged the prosecution’s account, arguing that no evidence placed Davis in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting and that he had fabricated his statements for financial gain.
Davis waived his right to a sentencing recommendation from the jury, while prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
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