Tupac murder: Keffe D sentenced to at least 40 years
· BehindLines newsroom
Thirty years after Tupac Shakur's death, a Nevada court on Tuesday sentenced the only person convicted in the murder case. Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, a former gang leader from Compton, California, was sentenced to 40 years to life: he will spend at least 40 years in prison. A jury found him guilty in September of murder with a deadly weapon. He said he would appeal.
The organiser, not the gunman
On 7 September 1996, the 25-year-old rapper was shot from a car near the Las Vegas Strip after a Mike Tyson fight. He died a few days later. Prosecutors said Davis did not fire the shots himself: he led the group in the white Cadillac from which the gunfire came, and acknowledged in his memoir that he had supplied the weapon. Prosecutors identified his nephew, Orlando Anderson, as the gunman. Anderson had fought with Shakur earlier that evening. He denied any involvement and was killed in another shooting in 1998, without having been arrested over this murder.
His own accounts turned against him
Davis's own statements changed the course of the investigation. In 2008, while police questioned him about the death of rapper Notorious B.I.G., he described his role in exchange for protection from prosecution. His memoir, “Compton Street Legend”, published in 2019, and subsequent interviews undermined that agreement, and a judge allowed the interview to be used at trial. Arrested in 2023, he was tried on the basis of those admissions. His defence described them as exaggerations meant to sell books and stressed the lack of physical evidence, such as the murder weapon.
At the hearing
The rapper's sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, described a brother who had been a father figure to her and asked for the maximum sentence, as did Maurice Shakur, another family member. When invited to speak, Davis only repeated that he would appeal. Judge Carli Kierny criticised him for presenting himself for three years as a changed man, reminding him that one cannot take a man's life and then turn the page.
Tupac Shakur sold more than 75 million records. His murder, long unsolved, fuelled countless theories over three decades.