Duane 'Keffe D' Davis sentenced to 40 years in prison for Tupac Shakur's murder
Duane 'Keffe D' Davis has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after he was found guilty of orchestrating the murder of Tupac Shakur.
A jury last month found him guilty of murdering Tupac in a 1996 drive-by shooting, in the first conviction in the case of Tupac's death, and he has been sentenced to spend four decades behind bars.
The 63-year-old has said he'll appeal his guilty verdict, with prosecutors arguing that while Davis did not fire the shots that killed Tupac he was the mastermind behind the murder.
Davis had admitted in a memoir that he was the one who had provided the murder weapon, and he had repeatedly acknowledged that he'd been inside the car from which the shots were fired.
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The BBC reports that Keffe D had told police in 2008 in a secret interview that he had been involved in Tupac's death, before explaining further in 2019 in his memoir Compton Street Legend.
That book and his subsequent discussion of it broke an agreement he'd made with authorities that meant criminal charges couldn't be filed against him, with a judge allowing the 2008 interview to be used as evidence in his trial.
Davis' legal representatives had argued during the trial that his claims in his memoir of his involvement in Tupac's death were exaggerations made to gain attention and sell books, but the jury did not see it that way.
Prosecutors argued that Davis had been the brains behind the shooting and given his nephew Orlando Anderson the gun that was used to kill Tupac.
Anderson had denied shooting Tupac, and was himself killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998.
Tupac had been 25 and on his way to perform at a Las Vegas nightclub in September 1996 when a Cadillac pulled up alongside his vehicle and someone opened fire.
Tupac was hit multiple times and died a week later of his injuries, while Marion 'Suge' Knight who was also in the car with him was also hit but was able to survive.
During the trial the court heard that Tupac had been questioned in an ambulance by a police officer as to the identity of his killer, but said 'no, we’ll take care of it'.
Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale said he'd pulled over the car Tupac and Knight had been in because it didn't have a licence plate, but had let them go with a warning.
10 minutes later they were called to respond to a shooting and Dale said he was the emergency services getting Tupac out of the car.
Three other people had been in the white Cadillac with Davis from which the shots were fired, but he is the only one still alive of those four.
Topics: US News, Crime, Tupac Shakur
Joe Harker