Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for orchestrating the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in 1996.
Davis, 63, was convicted in August of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon. He is the only person to have been charged and convicted over Shakur’s death. ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/827803a315dedbf36d18b66417a74303))
Judge Carli Kierny imposed the sentence at a hearing in Clark County District Court, telling Davis: “You don’t get to take a man from his family … and just walk away from it.” ([theguardian.com](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/oct/13/duane-davis-sentencing-tupac-shakur-murder))
Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said Davis was “guaranteed to die” behind bars and argued that he deserved the maximum available sentence. Davis briefly addressed the court, asking for personal items seized by police to be returned before saying he had nothing further to add. ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/827803a315dedbf36d18b66417a74303))
Tupac Shakur murder case
Shakur was shot several times on the night of 7 September 1996 after a white Cadillac pulled alongside the BMW in which he was travelling with music executive Marion “Suge” Knight. The rapper died six days later, while Knight survived.
Prosecutors said the shooting followed an earlier confrontation at the MGM Grand involving Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson. They argued that Davis organised the retaliation, obtained the gun and passed it to the back seat of the Cadillac, where the shots were fired.
Davis was not accused of pulling the trigger. His defence argued that there was no physical evidence, including no recovered murder weapon, linking him to the killing and portrayed his accounts as exaggerated attempts to make money and gain publicity. ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/827803a315dedbf36d18b66417a74303))
The prosecution instead relied heavily on statements Davis had made to police, documentarians and during media appearances, as well as claims in his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. His lawyer, Michael Sanft, said the defence planned to appeal the conviction. ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/827803a315dedbf36d18b66417a74303))
Members of Shakur’s family spoke during the sentencing hearing, including his sister Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur and his brother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur. Prosecutors said the family had endured years of Davis publicly discussing the killing.
Shakur, who was 25 when he died, had been travelling to a nightclub after watching Mike Tyson defeat Bruce Seldon in a boxing match. His death became one of hip-hop’s most enduring unsolved mysteries until Davis was arrested in 2023.
Davis’s nephew Anderson, whom prosecutors identified as the suspected gunman, died in 1998. The other men alleged to have been in the Cadillac have also died, and authorities have said they do not currently have sufficient evidence to charge anyone else in connection with Shakur’s murder. ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/90c08ae150f366c83938c425c73adb9c))
