Former American gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for orchestrating the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, nearly 30 years after the shooting.
Davis, 63, was sentenced on Tuesday in Las Vegas after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon in August, according to the Associated Press and CBS News.
Prosecutors said Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips gang, organised the attack and supplied the gun used in the shooting, although he did not pull the trigger. Davis’ lawyer has said he will appeal the conviction.
Shakur was shot on September 7, 1996, while sitting in a car with music executive Marion “Suge” Knight at a traffic light in Las Vegas. He died six days later, aged 25, while Knight survived.
Prosecutors relied in part on Davis’ statements about his presence in the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired. Davis also discussed the killing in interviews and his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. His defence team argued that his accounts were exaggerated and that physical evidence linking him to the crime was lacking.
Davis is the only person to have been charged in Shakur’s killing. His nephew, Orlando Anderson, whom Davis identified as the shooter, died in an unrelated shooting in 1998.
Shakur’s murder remained unsolved for decades and became one of the most widely discussed cases in hip-hop history.
