Former gang boss Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for orchestrating the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.
The rapper was gunned down on September 7 1996, after a car drove alongside him and opened fire as he travelled from a Mike Tyson boxing match. He died from his injuries six days later.
While he did not pull the trigger directly, Davis was accused of planning the murder, as a result of his nephew Orlando Anderson being involved in an altercation with Shakur just hours beforehand. Davis denied the accusations and entered a not guilty plea.
At the start of September, Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis was found guilty of orchestrating the late rapper’s murder and convicted of one count of murder with a deadly weapon – a move which Tupac’s family said they were “elated and relieved” by.
Davis has now been sentenced to at least 40 years in prison, and has said he will appeal the verdict.
In court, prosecutors argued that although Davis did not fire the gun himself, he was the ringleader in the group that committed the murder, and highlighted how he even wrote about the crime in his 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend.
Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for orchestrating the murder of Tupac Shakur. pic.twitter.com/5cMoOFXBfO
— Pop Base (@PopBase) October 13, 2026
In the book, Davis acknowledged being inside the white Cadillac during the drive-by shooting, and also wrote that he was the one who provided the gun to the person who pulled the trigger that night.
In court, Tupac’s brother Maurice requested the judge give the “longest possible sentence” to Davis, and the victim’s sister Sekyiwa told the court that the murder “for a long time, crippled my family” (via BBC News).
“He had so much promise, intentions for a better world,” she also said that her brother had hoped to help his local community, and shared hopes that Davis will use his time in prison to “contemplate what you’ve done to the world, not just to me”.
Davis was asked if he had anything to say after the sentence was handed down, to which he replied: “I’m good. I’m gonna appeal this case for sure”.
Judge Carli Kierny then told him: “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.”
Shakur was just 25 years old at the time of his death, and still remains one of the most renowned rappers of all time – selling over 75million records globally.
Back in 2008, Davis told authorities about the role he played in the killing in a police interview relating to the murder of fellow rapper The Notorious B.I.G.. He was shielded from criminal prosecution in exchange for the information, however, the statements he would go on to make in his book and in the interviews around the book later voided this agreement – meaning that the police interview could then be used as evidence in the murder trial.
Davis’ legal team continuously defended the comments in the memoir and argued that they were fiction and exaggerated to help sales. Prosecutors contested this, however, and argued that Davis did supply the gun to his nephew Orlando Anderson, who then opened fire on Tupac, and also sat in the Cadillac at the time of the attack.
Orlando Anderson denied any involvement in the shooting, and was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998.
Last month, Davis insisted that he is “innocent” in his first interview since the ruling, and said that his legal team had already filed an appeal. “Shit, I ain’t worried. I’m getting out on an appeal,” he said from the Clark County Detention Center in Nevada. “We already filed it before the trial even started. They violated my civil rights!”
Davis went on to accuse witnesses of being dishonest about his character throughout the trial, and claimed that he didn’t write the 2019 autobiography which was used as evidence in court.
