Duane “Keffe D” Davis was sentenced to 40 years to life Tuesday in a Las Vegas court after his conviction in August for orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.
Davis’ sentencing comes just after the 30th anniversary of the rapper’s drive-by shooting on Sept. 7, 1996. Shakur died from the gunshot wounds six days later. Davis was first arrested and indicted for his involvement in the crime in September 2023.
A Nevada grand jury indicted him on one count of murder with a deadly weapon. Davis maintained his innocence and said he invented the story to sell his memoir. He had previously admitted in interviews and in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that he was in the Cadillac that pulled up alongside Suge Knight’s car during the drive-by shooting that took Shakur’s life. The event was allegedly triggered by a violent feud between West Coast and East Coast hip-hop labels.
Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo described Davis at the time as the person who “ordered the death” of the hip-hip icon, who was 25 when he was gunned down.
“I beat the streets, I beat the Feds, and I beat cancer,” DiGiacomo quoted of Davis’ own words during his closing argument according to ABC News. “Now, he’s trying to beat 12 of you… Mr. Davis is attempting to escape responsibility for a crime everybody knows he committed, even him … End of the day, hold him accountable for the crime he committed.”
Davis was also named a defendant earlier this year in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Shakur’s surviving family, who said in the compliant that “there remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes.”
Shakur, who also used the stage name 2Pac, was in Las Vegas on the night of Sept. 7, 1996, to celebrate his business partner Tracy Danielle Robinson’s birthday. He also attended a Mike Tyson boxing match with Death Row Records founder Knight at the MGM Grand.
Around 11:15 p.m. that night, a white late-model Cadillac sedan pulled up to the passenger side of Knight’s BMW on the Las Vegas Strip and repeatedly fired, striking Shakur four times. Bullets hit his arm, thigh and he was hit twice in the chest, with one bullet entering his right lung. Shakur was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where he died from internal bleeding six days later.
A jury in Las Vegas found the 63-year-old guilty after three hours of closed-door deliberation. Davis told media outlets he plans to appeal the conviction.
