Former gang leader Duane "Keffe D" Davis has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for orchestrating the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, closing out a cold case that captivated hip-hop fans for nearly three decades.
A Clark County jury convicted Davis, 63, in September of one count of murder with a deadly weapon for Shakur's death in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996. Prosecutors did not argue that Davis fired the fatal shots; instead they said he was the ringleader of the group that carried out the killing and that he supplied the gun used in the attack, a claim Davis himself made in his memoir years before his arrest. At Tuesday's sentencing hearing, prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo argued that Davis had spent years "publicly grandstanding" and bragging about his role in Shakur's death, which he said "had wide-ranging effects upon the world," according to the BBC.
Shakur's sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, addressed the court and asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence.
The loss of Tupac, for a long time, crippled my family. He had so much promise, intentions for a better world.
Sekyiwa Shakur, victim-impact statement, Clark County District Court, Oct. 13, 2026
She told Davis directly that he would sit in prison and "contemplate what you've done to the world, not just to me." Shakur's brother, Maurice Shakur, also spoke, asking the judge for "the longest possible sentence." When Judge Carli Kierny asked Davis whether he had anything to say, he replied: "I'm good. I'm gonna appeal this case for sure." Before handing down the sentence, Kierny addressed him directly: "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."
Davis's conviction marked the first in a killing that had long been one of hip-hop's most notorious unsolved mysteries, fueling decades of documentaries, books and speculation about rivalries between the East Coast and West Coast rap scenes of the 1990s. Davis, a former leader of a Los Angeles street gang, was arrested in 2023 after years of public statements about his knowledge of the shooting, including in a 2019 memoir in which he described supplying the firearm.
Davis's attorney said he intends to appeal the conviction and sentence. Multiple outlets, including the Las Vegas Review-Journal, reported the sentence as 40 years to life, meaning Davis, now in his sixties, is unlikely to be released during his lifetime absent a successful appeal. No further court dates have been announced.
