Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former Compton gang leader convicted of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur amid escalating East Coast-West Coast rap rivalries, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison, capping a notorious cold-case homicide probe after three decades of uncertainty. Nevada District Court Judge Carli Kierny sentenced Davis, 63, after a Las Vegas jury needed only three hours to unanimously convict him of first-degree murder on Aug. 31. During the two-week trial, Clark County prosecutors presented evidence that Davis orchestrated the deadly drive-by shooting by obtaining the gun, passing it to the back seat of a car, and giving his nephew the green light to open fire on the hip-hop legend.
Given an opportunity to address the court before his sentencing, Davis was unrepentant. Asked by the judge if he had anything else to say before hearing his fate, Davis replied, “No, I’m good. I’m going to appeal this case, for sure,” according to a livestream of the proceeding from the .
Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, called her brother her protector and the “promise of all our grandparents” in an emotional victim impact statement. In a soft voice, she said her brother was “born an icon.” “He had so much promise [and] intentions for a better world for our people. He had plans, he had manifestos,” she said.
Our whole generation lost something huge. …I do believe when you take a life like that, you do deserve every minute of the maximum amount of punishment to contemplate what you’ve done to this world, not just to me.” When it was time to give her sentence, Judge Kierny rebuked Davis for publicly acknowledging his involvement in Shakur’s murder in statements to police, a BET interview, and his memoir, only to argue that he has since abandoned gang life, become a grandfather, and deserves to live out his remaining years in peace. 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, and neither did Las Vegas.
It took us 30 years, but at this time, you are going to face justice for what you did on September 7th, 1996.” Davis has maintained his innocence but did not testify in his own defense. His lawyer argued investigators failed to prove Davis was even in Las Vegas when the “California Love” rapper was shot on Sept. 7, 1996. Prosecutors, meanwhile, said Davis orchestrated the shooting as retaliation for an attack on his nephew, Orlando Anderson, at the MGM Grand casino hours earlier.
Surveillance footage showed Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, and others beating Anderson, a member of the South Side Compton Crips, after a Mike Tyson fight. Prosecutors said the confrontation grew out of a longstanding feud between the Crips and the rival Mob Piru Bloods, a gang with ties to Death Row. A key piece of evidence was a recorded 2008 interview in which Davis told Los Angeles detectives who were working with a federal task force that he had been riding in the front passenger seat of the white Cadillac that pulled alongside the BMW carrying Shakur and Knight near the Las Vegas Strip.
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