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Shocking Turn in Tupac's Murder Case: What Keffe D's Sentence Means
Former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison in the murder of Tupac Shakur after prosecutors argued that he arranged the rapper’s killing decades ago.
In August, a jury found Davis, 63, guilty of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon at the end of his two-week trial in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to NBC News.
While addressing Davis at his sentencing hearing on Tuesday, October 13, Judge Carli Kierny said, “You don’t get to take a man from his family.”
“You don’t get to take his very life, his whole life, and just walk away from it, especially when that man is Tupac Shakur,” Kierny added, per NBC News.
The chart-topping artist died six days after being wounded in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on September 7, 1996. Shakur was 25.
Shakur’s family members, including his sister Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, attended Davis’ sentencing.
“He would have been the promise of our parents. I believe when you take away someone like that, you deserve the maximum sentence,” Sekyiwa, 51, said in the courtroom, according to the outlet.
Davis found out his fate more than 30 years after Shakur’s death.
Prosecutors accused Davis of orchestrating Shakur’s murder to retaliate against the rapper for a fight involving Shakur, Marion “Suge” Knight, the cofounder of Shakur’s record label Death Row Records, and Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson, CBS News reported.
The evening of the fight, Shakur, Knight and several others watched Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon face off during a boxing match hosted at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Afterward, hotel security footage captured Shakur’s altercation with Anderson, an alleged member of the South Side Compton Crips gang. The encounter stemmed from accusations that Anderson allegedly robbed gang members with ties to Death Row Records.
Following the incident, Shakur was shot four times while riding in a vehicle with Knight, after they left the hotel. The shots that struck the rapper were allegedly fired from a white Cadillac.
In the courtroom on Tuesday, Davis only spoke when he told the judge that he wanted to receive personal items police had taken from his house in relation to his arrest in connection with the rapper’s death, per NBC News.
No one has been convicted of firing the shots that killed Shakur, the outlet reported. Davis is the sole person who has been found guilty in his death. He had previously pleaded not guilty.
Davis reportedly referenced his ties to Shakur’s killing in his memoir, Compton Street Legend, in which he called himself a “shotcaller” for the South Side Crips.
Prosecutors presented excerpts from the memoir during his trial, including how Davis and his co-writer Yusuf Jah described Shakur and others “crossing the line” when they got into the altercation with Anderson the evening of the drive-by shooting.
Following Davis’ conviction in August, he said he wanted to “appeal this matter,” according to the Associated Press.
His defense attorney, Michael Sanft, previously argued at Davis’ trial that there was “no evidence that Davis ever ordered a hit on anyone.”
