Keffe D Gets 40 Years to Life for Tupac Shakur's Murder

A Las Vegas judge sentenced Duane “Keffe D” Davis to 40 years to life on Tuesday for the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur — the first and only conviction in a case that went unsolved for nearly three decades.

Eighth Judicial District Court Judge Carli Kierny imposed two consecutive terms: 20 years to life for first-degree murder, and 20 years to life for using a deadly weapon. Davis got credit for 731 days already served.

A jury found Davis guilty on Aug. 31 after deliberating for a little over three hours. Shakur was shot on Sept. 7, 1996, near the Las Vegas Strip and died six days later. He was 25.

Kierny rejected Davis’s argument that he deserved more credit for time served. “You don’t get to take a man from his family. 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,” she said.

Davis, shackled at the waist in blue prison garb, argued briefly over the time-served credit but said little else. Asked if he had anything more to add, he told the judge: “I’m good. I’m going to appeal this case, for sure.” His attorney, Michael Sanft, vowed an appeal as well.

Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo had asked for the maximum, arguing Davis had tried to profit off the killing. Shakur’s family was in court: his sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, spoke of the psychological toll of decades without her brother, and his sibling Maurice called for the maximum sentence.

The prosecution’s case rested largely on Davis’s own words — interviews and a 2019 memoir in which he described his role. He said he sat in the passenger seat of a white Cadillac that pulled alongside Shakur’s BMW, and he named his nephew, Orlando Anderson, as the gunman. Anderson is dead. Who exactly pulled the trigger was never conclusively decided.

The defense argued the case was thin: alleged police corruption, a lawyer who had once represented Davis, and no physical evidence placing him at the scene. The jury convicted anyway.

The shooting, which came months after Shakur released the double album All Eyez on Me, stood for nearly 30 years as one of America’s most notorious cold cases. It fed the East Coast-West Coast feud that shadowed 1990s rap. Davis’s 2023 arrest finally broke the case.