Davis signals appeal as Shakur’s family urges maximum term
A Nevada judge sentenced Duane “Keffe D” Davis on Tuesday to at least 40 years in prison for orchestrating the 1996 drive-by shooting murder of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, ending the first criminal prosecution to emerge from a cold case that had drawn public attention for nearly three decades.
Davis, 63, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, was convicted in September of one count of murder with a deadly weapon. Asked at the hearing by Judge Carli Kierny whether he had anything to say, Davis replied: “I’m good. I’m gonna appeal this case for sure.”
Shakur was 25 years old when he was shot in Las Vegas on 7 September 1996. At the time of his death he was among rap’s most influential figures and has sold more than 75 million records worldwide.
Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo argued during the sentencing hearing that Davis had spent years “publicly grandstanding” and bragging about his role in Shakur’s death, which he said “had wide-ranging effects upon the world.” Prosecutors maintained that although Davis did not fire the gun himself, he was the ringleader of the group that carried out the shooting.
Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, told the court: “The loss of Tupac, for a long time, crippled my family.” She said her brother had “so much promise, intentions for a better world,” and had hoped to help his local community. She asked the judge to give Davis the maximum sentence, telling him he would sit in prison and “contemplate what you’ve done to the world, not just to me.”
Shakur’s brother, Maurice Shakur, also addressed the court and asked for “the longest possible sentence.”
Before imposing the term, Kierny told Davis: “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. The world never forgot about him and his death.”
The prosecution’s case rested largely on Davis’ own words, in which he repeatedly and publicly acknowledged being inside the white Cadillac from which the fatal shots were fired. In exchange for being shielded from criminal prosecution, he told authorities about his role during a secret 2008 police interview relating to the killing of fellow rapper Notorious B.I.G., real name Christopher Wallace, who was killed in a shooting months after Shakur.
Davis elaborated further in his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, which generated publicity and follow-up media interviews. But the book and the interviews voided a protective agreement Davis had negotiated with authorities that had previously blocked criminal charges from being filed. A judge then allowed his 2008 police interview to be used against him at trial.
Davis’ defense team urged jurors to view his public comments as fiction — bravado and exaggeration intended to sell books and earn money. Prosecutors countered that Davis ordered the attack and supplied the gun that his nephew, Orlando Anderson, used to open fire. Anderson was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998, having denied involvement in Shakur’s killing.
The conviction was the first to result from the investigation into Shakur’s killing, which had produced no criminal charges during the three decades between the crime and the trial.