Tupac ProfileOver a month after a jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of orchestrating the murder of Tupac Shakur, a judge has handed down their sentence.
Davis has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Nevada judge Carli Kierny delivered the sentence on Tuesday (13 October).
Upon handing Davis his sentence, Kierny said, “You don't get to take a man from his family,” referring to Shakur, per the ABC.
“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.”
In August, a jury convicted Davis, a former gang leader, of first-degree murder. Davis was accused of being the ringleader of a group planning to kill Shakur, who was 25 years old at the time of his murder. The jury reportedly reached a guilty verdict in less than three hours.
He was charged with a single count of murder using a deadly weapon in Clark County, Nevada, following a trial that began in mid-August. He pleaded not guilty.
“While no amount of time in prison can bring Tupac back, we hope this sentencing brings some measure of closure and peace to his family after nearly 30 years,” District Attorney Steve Wolfson said, per Consequence of Sound.
Tupac was shot four times on the night of 7 September 1996, during a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas Strip. He died from his wounds six days later while he was in the hospital.
The murder of Tupac was one of the most notorious in hip-hop history. For 30 years, the case remained unsolved, with no conviction, until prosecutors charged Davis after he admitted to his involvement in a memoir.
In his memoir, Davis wrote that he was in the Cadillac with Shakur’s killer when it happened, and provided the gun used. He didn’t say who fired it.
In September 2023, Davis was charged over Tupac’s murder. He was initially indicted on one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon (as noted by The Associated Press, accomplices to a murder can be charged for the crime itself), as well as intent to promote, further, or assist a criminal gang.
Davis is the only person ever to have been charged in connection with the rapper’s untimely passing following decades of investigations.
