Duane Davis, the man known as Keefe D, was sentenced Tuesday in Las Vegas to 40 years to life in prison for orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.
Davis, 63, is the first and only person ever convicted in the case. A jury found him guilty of first degree murder with a deadly weapon on August 31, after less than three hours of deliberation.
Prosecutors never said Davis pulled the trigger. They said he was the shot caller who got the gun and ordered the hit, hours after Tupac and his crew beat up his nephew Orlando Anderson at the MGM Grand on a Mike Tyson fight night.
“You don’t get to take a man from his family.”
Judge Carli Kierny, speaking to Davis before sentencing
Tupac’s family was in the courtroom. His sister Sekyiwa and his brother Maurice spoke before the sentence and asked for the maximum. Prosecutors wanted the maximum too, pointing to the years Davis spent talking publicly about the killing in interviews and in his book. Those words became a central part of the case against him. Davis has said he plans to appeal.
Tupac was 25, riding with Suge Knight, when he was shot on September 7, 1996. He died six days later. Thirty years later the case finally has a sentence, and at 63, Davis will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in a Nevada prison.
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