On Tuesday, 13 October, in a Las Vegas courtroom, Judge Carli Kierny sentenced Duane “Keffe D” Davis to 40 years to life in prison for the murder of Tupac Shakur. Davis is 63. Shakur was 25, and at the height of his career, when he was shot near the Strip on the night of September 7, 1996. Before passing sentence, as CNN reported, the judge spoke directly to the man in front of her:
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, and neither did Las Vegas,” she said. “Took us 30 years, but at this time, you are going to face justice for what you did on September 7, 1996.”
The arithmetic of a sentence
Even the counting of days was argued over. CNN and RNZ reported that Davis has 731 days of credit for time already served. The New York Post described a disagreement soon after he entered the room, with Davis rolling his eyes and the judge telling him: “I understand that that’s your version, however, the law says I cannot credit that towards your sentence.”
Accounts of how the 40 years add up also differ. Variety reported 20 years to life for first-degree murder plus 20 years to life for the deadly-weapon enhancement, and the Post likewise described a murder term with a weapon enhancement. NBC News quoted the judge as saying the sentence included a 20-year mandatory enhancement “for profiting off the murder.” RTÉ stated at one point that Davis had received life without the possibility of parole. That does not match any other account. The Associated Press reported that life without parole was the maximum he faced, and that even with credit for time served he will not be eligible for parole until he is at least 100.
A brawl, a Cadillac, a red light
The story starts with a boxing match. Members of two Los Angeles-area gangs had come to Las Vegas to watch Mike Tyson fight Bruce Seldon for the world heavyweight title. One was the South Side Compton Crips, whose self-described leader was Davis. The other was Mob Piru, associated with Shakur, with Marion “Suge” Knight and with their label, Death Row Records. Inside the MGM Grand, Shakur and members of his entourage beat up Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson. Pitchfork notes that the beating was itself payback for an earlier fight in Los Angeles that year between Anderson and an associate of Knight’s.
In the account Davis later gave police, he put his nephew and two other men into a white Cadillac within hours and went looking for Shakur and Knight. He said he handed a gun to the two men in the back seat. At a red light, one of them fired through the window into the vehicle Knight was driving. Shakur, in the passenger seat, was hit four times and died in hospital six days later. A bullet fragment grazed Knight’s head. He is now serving a 28-year sentence for an unrelated voluntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors never said Davis pulled the trigger, and Nevada law did not require them to. They have never named the gunman. All three of the other men in the Cadillac are dead, and CBS News reported that the man prosecutors say first supplied the gun is dead too. Davis is the one passenger still alive.
The man who would not stay quiet
For nearly three decades the case went nowhere. No weapon was found. Witnesses kept to the gangs’ “code of the streets.” Whatever physical evidence there was faded with time. Detectives believed Davis was involved but could not charge him. In 2008, facing drug charges, he spoke to investigators under a proffer agreement that kept his words from being used against him. According to Pitchfork, he told them his nephew fired: “He rolled down the window, popped ’em. If they drove on my side, I would have popped ’em.”
Then he kept talking, in interviews, documentaries and podcasts, and in 2019 in a memoir, Compton Street Legend. “I know the real f…king story,” he wrote. Prosecutors said the book cancelled the protection of the proffer deal. Kierny allowed both the memoir and the old police interviews into evidence. He was arrested in 2023, and on August 31 a jury took less than three hours to convict him.
Here is a reflection, not a finding. Silence protected him for decades, and the urge to tell the story convicted him.
His defence called the confessions a performance. Michael Sanft, his lawyer, told jurors that apart from Davis’s own statements, nothing placed him in Las Vegas that night: no surveillance footage, no phone logs. He compared the memoir to Titanic. Prosecutors answered that the case was “drenched with circumstantial evidence.” After the verdict Davis told The Hollywood Reporter “I’m not no fucking killer” and said he “never read that book.” He had once claimed Sean “Diddy” Combs offered $1 million for Shakur’s death. Combs has long denied it, and Davis now says the offer never happened. Asked what he would tell Combs, he said: “help me out in here. Look out for my family.”
That night in 1996 shaped the decade that followed. Reuters and the AP, in a report carried by Al Jazeera, called it a cold case that shook the golden era of rap. According to the South China Morning Post, it fed the East Coast-West Coast feud. NBC reported that it set off a gang war in Compton. Christopher Wallace, the Notorious B.I.G., was shot dead in Los Angeles in March 1997, and there has long been speculation that his killing was revenge. Nobody has ever been charged with it.
What the family said
Sekyiwa Shakur’s voice broke as she spoke. “My brother was born an icon. He was born a legend,” she said. His death, she said, had crippled the family emotionally and mentally. She described depression, suicidal ideation and trauma: “Both of my children were raised in my grief.” She said, “He was supposed to be my life partner. I spent 30 years without my protection.” She remembered small things: “I miss his skin. I miss his scars on his head. He had a strawberry on his chest.” His brother, Mopreme Shakur, said: “Pac didn’t have a chance to have kids... All Pac got was a death sentence.”
The prosecution asked for the maximum. The Post credited the request to prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo, and NBC credited very similar words to Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal: “He 100% deserves the maximum possible sentence.” Sanft asked for 40 years and said Davis would appeal. District Attorney Steve Wolfson said in a statement that “no amount of time in prison can bring Tupac back.”
Davis wore a navy prison uniform and handcuffs. When he was invited to address the court and Shakur’s family, he said only, “I’m good.” His one request was that police give back some belongings they had taken from his house, including his pictures.