Duane Davis, the former Los Angeles gang leader who boasted in books and interviews of his involvement in the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur only to deny it when he came to trial, has been sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in prison.
Addressing Davis on Tuesday, local time, Judge Carli Kierny said his assertions that he had changed since the 1990s fell short.
“You don’t get to take a man from his family,” Judge Kierny said, referring to Shakur.
“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.
“The world never forgot about him.”
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, was found guilty of first-degree murder in August.
What to know about the Tupac murder trial
Shakur was shot dead in the passenger seat of an SUV driven by his record executive, Marion “Suge” Knight, in 1996.
Davis’s 2023 arrest, accused of providing the gun used in the killing, ended what had stood for nearly three decades as one of America’s most notorious cold cases.
Despite his conviction, the question of who pulled the trigger in the fatal shooting of the 25-year-old rap legend has never been conclusively decided.
All three other men in the car with Davis that night have since died.
Davis was convicted of masterminding the murder to avenge the beating of his nephew by Shakur and members of the rapper’s entourage inside the MGM Grand casino on the Las Vegas Strip on September 7, 1996.
Davis has said he would appeal his conviction.
A photograph of Tupac Shakur (front right seat) with Suge Knight purportedly taken minutes before Shakur was shot, on September 6, 1996. (Supplied: Wikimedia Commons/Leonard Jefferson)
Fatal shooting sparked by casino brawl
The clash at the casino stemmed from hostility between two Los Angeles street gangs: the South Side Compton Crips, of which Davis was the self-described leader, and Mob Piru, associated with Shakur, Knight, and their music label, Death Row Records.
Members of both groups were in Las Vegas that night to see a world heavyweight title boxing match between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon.
Within hours of the casino brawl, Davis went looking for Shakur and Knight, determined to settle scores, according to an account Davis later gave police in an unrelated investigation and that prosecutors cited during his murder trial.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis had boasted in books of his involvement, but denied it in court. (Reuters: John Locher)
Davis said he passed a gun to the two men seated behind him, one of whom opened fire through the window when they pulled alongside Knight and Shakur’s vehicle in traffic.
The murder, which silenced one of rap’s most commercially successful and influential artists, heightened the image of violence permeating 1990s hip-hop culture while stoking the infamous East Coast — West Coast “gangsta” rap feud of the era.
Jury delivers guilty verdict in Tupac Shakur killing case
Shakur was struck four times and died in a hospital six days later.
Knight, who suffered a minor injury from a bullet fragment that grazed his head, is now serving a 28-year prison term on an unrelated voluntary manslaughter conviction.
Authorities said they long believed Davis was involved in Shakur’s killing but lacked sufficient evidence to charge him.
That changed when he went public with his story in media appearances and a memoir that, along with tapes of his secret meetings with investigators, formed the bulk of the prosecution’s murder case.
Those comments led authorities to reopen the case.
ABC/Wires